The Age of George III

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Defence of Queen Caroline

following the Bill of Pains and Penalties being brought against her

House of Lords, 3 October 1820

[112] The order of the day being read for the further consideration and second reading of the bill, intituled "An Act to deprive Her Majesty Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of the title, prerogatives, rights, privileges, and exemptions of Queen Consort of this realm, and to dissolve the marriage between his majesty and the said Caroline Amelia Elizabeth;" and for hearing counsel for and against the same; Counsel were accordingly called in.

Then Mr. Brougham, the Attorney-General of the Queen, opened the defence: —

May it please your Lordships —

The time is now come when I feel that I shall truly stand in need of all your indulgence. It is not merely the august presence of this assembly which embarrasses me; for I have oftentimes had experience of its condescension — nor the novelty of this proceeding that perplexes me; for the mind gradually gets reconciled to the strangest things — nor is it the magnitude of this cause that oppresses me; for I am borne up and cheered by that conviction of its justice, which I share with all mankind; but, my lords, it is the very force of that conviction, the knowledge that it operates universally, the feeling that it operates rightly, which now dismays me with the apprehension, [113] that my unworthy mode of handling it, may, for the first time, injure it; and, while others have trembled for a guilty client, or been anxious in a doubtful case, or crippled with a consciousness of some hidden weakness, or chilled by the influence, or dismayed by the hostility, of public opinion, I, knowing that here there is no guiltiness to conceal, nor any thing, save the resources of perjury to dread, am haunted with the apprehension, that my feeble discharge of this duty may for the first time cast that cause into doubt, and may turn against me for condemnation those millions of your lordships' countrymen, whose jealous eyes are now watching us, and who will not fail to impute it to me, if your lordships should reverse the judgment which the Case for the Charge has extorted from them. And I feel, my lords, under this weight so troubled, that I can hardly at this moment, with all the reflection which the indulgence of your lordships has accorded to me, compose my spirits to the discharge of my professional duty, under the weight of that grave responsibility which accompanies it. It is no light addition to this feeling, that I foresee, though at some distance, happily, that, before these proceedings close, it may be my unexampled lot to discharge a duty, in which the loyalty of a good subject may, among the ignorant, among the thoughtless — certainly not with your lordships for a moment — suffer an impeachment.

My lords; the princess Caroline of Brunswick arrived in this country in the year 1795 — the niece of our sovereign, the intended consort of his heir apparent, and herself not a very remote heir to the crown of these realms. But I now go back to that period, only for the purpose of passing over all the interval which elapsed between that arrival and her departure in 1814. I rejoice that, for the present at least, the most faithful discharge of my duty permits me to draw this veil; but I cannot do so without pausing for an instant, to guard myself against a misrepresentation to which I know this cause may not unnaturally be exposed, and to assure your lordships most solemnly, that if I did not think that the cause of the Queen, as attempted to be established by the evidence against her, not only does not require recrimination at present — not only imposes no duty of even uttering one whisper by way of attack, by way of insinuation, against the conduct of her [114] illustrious husband — but that it prescribes to me, for the present, silence upon this great and painful head of the case — I solemnly assure your lordships, that but for this conviction, my lips on that branch would not be closed; for, in discretionally abandoning the exercise of that power which I feel I have, in postponing for the present the statement of that case of which I am possessed, I feel confident that I am waving a right which I have, and abstaining from the use of materials which are mine. And let it not be thought, my lords, that if either now I did conceive, or if hereafter I should so far be disappointed in my estimate of the failure of the Case against me, as to feel it necessary to exercise that right — let no man vainly suppose, that not only I, but that any, the youngest member of the profession would hesitate one moment in the fearless discharge of that duty. I once before took leave to remind your lordships — which was unnecessary, but there are many whom it may be needful to remind — that an advocate, by the sacred duty of his connection with his client, knows, in the discharge of that office, but one person in the world, that client and none other. To save that client by all expedient means — to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to himself — is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; and he must not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction, which he may bring upon any other; nay, separating even the duties of a patriot from those of an advocate, he must go on reckless of the consequences, if his fate it should unhappily be, to involve his country in confusion for his client.

But, my lords, I am not reduced to this painful necessity. I feel that if I were to touch that branch of the Case now, until any event shall afterwards show that unhappily I am deceiving myself — I feel that if I were now to approach that branch of the Case, I should seem to give up the higher ground of innocence on which I put it; I should seem to be justifying when I plead not guilty; I should seem to argue in extenuation and in palliation of offences, or levities, or improprieties, the least and the lightest of which I stand here to deny. For it is false, as has been said — it is foul and false as those who dared to say, who, pretending to discharge the higher duties to God, have shown, that they know not the first of their duties to their fellow-creatures — it is foul and false [115] and scandalous in those who have said (and they know that it is so who have dared to say), that there are improprieties admitted to be proved against the Queen. I deny that the admission has been made. I contend that the evidence does not prove them. I will show you that the evidence disproves them. One admission, doubtless, I do make; and let my learned friends who are of counsel for the Bill take all the benefit of it, for it is all that they have proved by their evidence. I grant that her majesty left this country, and went to reside in Italy. I grant that her society was chiefly foreign. I grant that it was an inferior society to that in which she once moved in this country. I admit, my lords, that while here, and while happy in the protection — not perhaps, of her own family, after the fatal event which deprived it of its head; but while enjoying the society of your lordships and the families of your lordships, I grant that the Queen moved in a more choice, in perhaps a more dignified society, than she did in Italy. And the charge against her is, that she has associated with Italians, instead of her own countrymen and countrywomen; and that, instead of the peeresses of England, she has sometimes associated with Italian nobility, and sometimes with persons of the commonalty of that country. But, who are they that bring this charge? Others may accuse her — others may blame her for going abroad — others may tell tales of the consequences of living among Italians, and of not associating with the women of her country, or of her adopted country; but it is not your lordships that have any right to say so. It is not you, my lords, that can fling this at her majesty. You are the last persons in the world — you, who now presume to judge her, are the last persons in the world so to charge her; for you are the witnesses whom she must call to vindicate her from that charge. You are the last persons who can so charge her; for you, being her witnesses, have been also the instigators of that only admissible crime. While she was here, she courteously opened the doors of her palace to the families of your lordships. She graciously condescended to mix herself, in the habits of most familiar life, with those virtuous and distinguished persons. She condescended to court your society — and, as long as it suited purposes not of hers — as [116] long as it was subservient to views not of her own — as long as it served interests in which she had no concern — she did not court that society in vain. But when changes took place — when other views arose — when that power was to be retained which she had been made the instrument of grasping — when that lust of power and place was to be continued its gratification, to the first gratification of which she had been made the victim — then her doors were opened in vain; then that society of the peeresses of England was withholden from her; then she was reduced to the alternative humiliating indeed, for I say that her condescension was no humiliation. She was only lowering herself, by omitting the distinction of rank to enjoy the first society in the world. But then it pleased you to reduce her to what was really humiliation — either to acknowledge that you had deserted her, to seek the company of those who now made it a favour, which she saw they unwillingly granted, or to leave the country and have recourse to other company. I say then, my lords, that it is not here that I must be told — it is not in the presence of your lordships I must expect to hear any one lift his voice to complain, that the princess of Wales went to reside in Italy, and associated with those whose society she neither ought to have chosen, nor perhaps would have chosen — certainly would not have chosen — perhaps I may say ought not to have chosen — had she been in other or happier circumstances.

In the midst of this, and of so much suffering as to an ingenuous mind such conduct could not fail to cause, she still had one resource, and which, for a space, was allowed to remain to her — I need hardly say I mean the comfort of knowing that she still possessed the undiminished attachment and grateful respect of her justly respected and deeply lamented daughter. An event took place which, of all others, most excites the feelings of a parent — that daughter was about to form a union upon which the happiness — upon which, alas! the Queen knew too well how much the happiness — or the misery of future life depended. No announcement was made to her majesty of the projected alliance. All England occupied with the subject — Europe looking on with an interest which it certainly had in so great an event — England had it announced; Europe had it announced — but the one person to whom no notice of it [117] was given, was the mother of the bride who was to be espoused; and all that she had done then to deserve this treatment was, with respect to one of the illustrious parties, that she had been proved, by his evidence against her, to be not guilty of the charge; and, with respect to his servants, that they had formerly used her as the tool by which their ambition was to be gratified. The marriage itself was consummated. Still, no notice thereof was communicated to the Queen. She heard it accidentally by a courier who was going to announce the intelligence to the Pope, that ancient, intimate, much-valued ally of the Protestant Crown of these realms. A prospect grateful to the whole nation, interesting to all Europe, was now afforded, that the marriage would be a fruitful source of stability to the royal family of these realms. The whole of that period, painfully interesting to a parent as well as to a husband, was passed without the slightest communication; and if the princess Charlotte's own feelings had prompted her to open one, she was in a state of anxiety of mind and of delicacy of frame, in consequence of that her first pregnancy, which made it dangerous to have a struggle between power and authority on the one hand, and affection and duty on the other. An event truly fatal followed, which plunged the whole of England into grief and gloom; in which all our foreign neighbours sympathized: and while, with a due regard to the feelings of those foreign allies, and even of strange powers and princes, with whom we had no alliance that event was speedily communicated by particular messengers to each, the person in all the world who had the deepest interest in that event — the person whose feelings, above those of all the rest of mankind, were most overwhelmed and stunned by it, was left to be stunned and overwhelmed by it accidentally; as she had, by accident, heard of the marriage. But, if she had not heard the dreadful news by accident, she would, ere long, have felt it; for the decease of the princess Charlotte was communicated to her mother, by the issuing of the Milan Commission and the commencement of the proceedings for the third time against her character and her life.

See, my lords, the unhappy fate of this illustrious woman! It has been her lot always to lose her surest stay, her best protector, when the dangers most thickened around her; and, by a coincidence [118] almost miraculous, there has hardly been one of her defenders withdrawn from her, that his loss has not been the signal of an attack upon her existence. Mr. Pitt was her earliest defender and friend in this country. He died in 1806; and, but a few weeks afterwards, the first inquiry into the conduct of her royal highness began. He left her a legacy to Mr. Perceval, her firm, dauntless, most able advocate. And, no sooner had the hand of an assassin laid Mr. Perceval low, than she felt the calamity of his death, in the renewal of the attacks, which his gallantry, his skill, and his invariable constancy had discomfited. Mr. Whitbread then undertook her defence; and, when that catastrophe happened, which all good men lament, without any distinction of party or sect, again commenced the distant grumbling of the storm; for it then, happily, was never allowed to approach her, because her daughter stood her friend, and there were who worshipped the rising sun. But, when she lost that amiable and beloved daughter, all which might have been expected here — all which might have been dreaded by her if she had not been innocent — all she did dread — because, who, innocent or guilty, loves persecution; who delights in trial, when character and honour are safe? — all was at once allowed to burst upon her head; and the operations commenced by the Milan Commission. And, my lords, as if there were no possibility of the Queen losing a protector without some most important act being played in this drama against her, the day which saw the venerable remains of our revered sovereign consigned to the tomb — of that sovereign who, from the first outset of the princess in English life, had been her constant and steady defender — that same sun ushered the ringleader of the band of perjured witnesses into the palace of his illustrious successor! Why, my lords, do I mention these things? Not for the sake of making so trite a remark, as that trading politicians are selfish — that spite is twin-brother to ingratitude — that nothing will bind base natures — that favours conferred, and the duty of gratitude neglected, only make those natures the more malignant. My lords, the topic would be trite and general, and I should be ashamed to trouble your lordships with it; but I say this once more, in order to express my deep sense of the unworthiness with which I now succeed such powerful defenders, and [119] my alarm lest my exertions should fail to do what theirs, had they been living, must have accomplished.

My lords; I pray your attention for a few moments, to what all this has resulted in. It has ended in the getting up of a story, to the general features of which I am now first about to direct the attention of your lordships. But I must begin by praying you to recollect what the Evidence has not only not proved, but is very likely to have discharged from the memory of your lordships — I mean the Opening of my learned friend, the Attorney-General. Now, he shall himself describe, in his own words, the plan and the construction of that opening statement. It is most material for your lordships to direct your attention to this; because much of the argument rests on this comparative view. He did not then make a general speech, without book, without direction or instruction; but his speech was the spoken evidence; it was the transcript of that which he had before him; and the way in which that transcript was prepared, I leave your lordships, even uninformed to a certain degree as you now must needs be, to conjecture. "I will," said my learned friend — and every one who heard him make the promise, and who knows his strictly honourable nature, must have expected its accurate fulfilment — "I will most conscientiously state nothing which I do not, in my conscience, believe I shall be able to substantiate in proof; but I will withhold nothing, upon which I have the same conviction." I believed the attorney-general when I heard him promise. I knew that he spoke from his conscience; and now that I see he has failed in the fulfilment, I equally well know that there is but one cause for the failure — that he told you what he had in his brief, which he had got into his brief from the mouths of the witnesses. He could get it in no other way but that. The witnesses who had told falsehoods before, were scared from repeating them here, before your lordships. Now, I will give your lordships one or two specimens of this; because I think these samples will enable you to form a pretty accurate estimate, not only of the value of that evidence, where it comes up to my learned friend's Opening, but also to form a pretty good guess of the manner in which that part of it which did succeed [120] was prepared for that purpose. I will merely take one or two of the leading witnesses, and compare one or two of the matters which my learned friend opened, and will not tire you with the manner in which they told you the story.

First, my learned friend said, that the Evidence of the Queen's improper conduct would come down almost "until the time at which I have now the honour of addressing your lordships." I am quoting the words of my learned friend, from the short-hand writer's notes. In fact, by the Evidence, that "almost" means up to the present time, all but three years; that is to say, all but a space of time, exactly equal to that space of time over which the other part of the Evidence extends. — At Naples, where the scene is laid which is first so sedulously brought before your lordships, as if the first connection between the two parties began upon that occasion — as if that were the night when the guilty intentions, which they long had been harbouring, but for want of opportunity had not been able to fulfil, were at length gratified — at Naples — I pray your lordships to attend to the manner in which he opened this first and most important branch of his whole case, and which if it fails, that failure must affect the statement of circumstances, not only in this part in the Evidence, but in all the subsequent stages of it — How does my learned friend open that part of his case? "I shall show you," says he, "that there are clear, decisive marks of two persons having slept in the bed — the night that the Queen came home, the second night she was at Naples, she returned early from the Opera; she went to her own room, from thence she repaired to Bergami's room, where Bergami himself was — the next day she was not visible till an unusually late hour, and was inaccessible to the nobility of Naples. Every one of these assertions, rising one above another in succession and importance, but even the lowest of them of great moment to the case against her majesty — every one of them not only is false, but is negatived by the Witness produced to support them. Demont gives no "decisive marks;" she gives a doubtful and hesitating case. With one exception, there is nothing specific, even in what [121] she swears; and with that I shall afterwards come to deal. But she denies that she knew where the Queen went when she first left her own bedroom. She denies that she knew where Bergami was at that time. She says affirmatively that the next morning the Queen was up and alert by the usual lime. Not one tittle of evidence does she give, or any body else, of her having refused access to any one person who called; nor is any evidence given (to make it more complete) that any body called that morning.

Then come we to that which my learned friend opened with more than even his wonted precision. We know that all the rest was from his instructions. It could be from no other source. He had never been in Italy. Neither he nor my learned friend, the solicitor-general, have given us any idea of their knowing what sort of a country it is — that they know any thing of a masquerade — that they know any thing of a Cassino. My learned friend has represented as if the being blackballed at that Cassino is ruin to a person's character; forgetting who may be the members of the society at that Cassino — that there may be a colonel Browne — that it is held at the very place where the Milan Commission was held. "But," says my learned friend, the solicitor-general, "who ever heard of the wife of a royal prince of this country going disguised to a masquerade? Who would have thought that, being disguised, and being on her way to a masquerade, she did not go in her own state coach, with her livery servants, with a coachman bedizened with lacquays plaistered, with all the "pomp, pride, and circumstance" of a court or a birthday, but that she went in a common hired carriage, without the royal arms, without splendor and garb, out at the back-door, instead of issuing out of the front door, with all the world spectators. Nay, I only wonder that my learned friend did not state, that she went to a masquerade in a domino, and a false face! My lords, it was not, therefore, from their own personal observation, certainly not from having been present at these royal recreations of Murat's court, that my learned friends obtained their knowledge of this cause; but they have it from Demont or Majoochi; the witnesses who have been examined again and again; and who have again and again told the same story; but which story being founded in fact, they now recollected only the part that was true, and forgot what was untrue. [122] "Then," says my learned friend, in this instance which I am now going to state, leaving us to our general suspicions as to where he got his knowledge upon the other circumstances, and coming to something more specific, "I am instructed to state," and in another instance, "the witness says," so and so, showing he was reading the witness's deposition. "I am instructed to state, that the dress which the princess had assumed, or rather the want of it in part, was extremely indecent and disgusting;" and he adds afterwards, in commenting upon it, that it was of the "most indecent description;" so that she was, on account of that indecency, on account of the disgusting nature of it, by those who actually saw it, hooted from the public theatre. Your lordships will recollect what it came to — that the princess was there in a dress that was exceedingly ugly — the maid Demont said, in a "very ugly" dress; and that was all my learned friend could get her now to assert — that it was without form, and ugly — masques came about her, and she, unknown in her own masque — for, strange as it may appear to my learned friend, a person at a masquerade endeavours to be disguised — was attacked from joke or from spite — oftener from joke than from spite; her own dress being of that ugly description — from what reason is left to this moment unexplained.

My lords; I should fatigue your lordships if I were to go over other instances, I shall only mention that at Messina. Voices are said to have been heard. The attorney-general opened, that at Messina he should prove, that the princess and Bergami were locked up in the same room and were heard speaking together. That is now reduced, by the evidence, to certain voices being heard, she cannot say whose. At Savona, where my learned friend gives, you, as he generally does in his speech, the very day of the month, the 12th of April, he stated, that the only access to the princess's room was through Bergami's, where there was no bed, but that in the princess's room there was a large bed. The witness proved only one of those particulars out of three.

Passing over a variety of particulars, I shall give only one or two instances from Majoochi's and Sacchi's evidence. "The princess remained in Bergami's [123] room a very considerable time," the night I that Majoochi swore she went into his room, "and there the Witness heard them kissing each other," says the attorney-general. Majoochi says, she remained there one of the times ten minutes, the other fifteen; and that he only heard a whispering. Now, as to Sacchi. The story as told by my learned friend, from the brief in his hand, and which I have no doubt my learned friend has in his papers, and that Sacchi had told before at Milan, is, that a courier one night returned from Milan, that is, that he, Sacchi, returned as a courier from Milan, for it was he whom he meant — that finding Bergami out of his own room, he looked about and saw him come out of the Queen's room undressed — that all the family were in bed — that he observed him — that he spoke to him — and that Bergami explained it by saying, he had gone, hearing his child cry, to see what was the matter; and desired him not to mention any thing about it. — Sacchi negatives this, as far as a man speaking to so unusual a circumstance, which if it had happened, must have forcibly impressed his recollection, can do so. He denies it as strongly as a man can, by denying all recollection of any such particulars, although not for want of examination; for my learned friend, the solicitor-general, questions him over and over again, and he cannot get him to come within a mile of such a fact.

Then come we to the disgraceful scenes, as the attorney-general described them, at the Barona; which he said — and if they had been as they were represented to him, I doubt not he used a very fair expression — he did not tell us what they were, but "they were so disgraceful, that it rather made that house deserve the name of a brothel, more than that of a palace, or a place fit for the reception of her majesty, or a person of the least virtue or delicacy." Here, there is a most entire failure of proof from all the witnesses.

Then we are told, that at Naples the attendants were shocked and surprised by the conduct of the Queen — that in Sicily no doubt was entertained by them, from what they saw of the familiarities between the parties, that a criminal intercourse was going on there. Not one of those attendants describes that effect to have [124] been produced upon their minds by what they saw. I shall afterwards come to what they did see; but they do not tell you this, though frequently prompted to do it. Then, as to the visiting of the nobility — that the Queen's society was given up by the ladies of rank of her own country, from the moment she left this country — that they all fell away — in short, that she was treated abroad, I know not from what motive, with something of the same abandonment with which she was treated in this country; I well know from what motive. All this is disproved by the evidence. How came my learned friend to forget the fact of that most respectable woman, lady Charlotte Lindsay, joining her at Naples, after her conduct had been observed by all the servants; with which servants lady Charlotte Lindsay naturally lived on terms of intimacy, and between which servants, I have no idea that any thing of that grave-like secrecy existed, which each of them has represented to have existed between themselves up to the time they came to the Cotton Garden depot, and up to the moment that they brought from that depot to your lordships' bar, the resources of their perjury. Lady Charlotte Lindsay, lord and lady Glenbervie, Mrs. Falconet and others had no doubt some intercourse with those Neapolitan servants, all of whom are represented as having been perfectly astounded with the impropriety, nay the indecency of the conduct of their royal mistress; and yet those persons are proved to have joined her, some at Naples, some at Rome, others at Leghorn, and to have associated with her, in spite of all this open and avowed indecorum.

But, even to a much later period, and in higher quarters, the Queen's company has been proved, by my learned friend's case, not to have been treated abroad with the neglect which it experienced here. She has been, in the first place; courteously received, even after her return from the long voyage, by the legitimate sovereign prince of Baden, a prince with a legitimate origin, though with a revolutionary accession to his territory. Equally well received was she by the still more legitimate Bourbons at Palermo; but courted was her society by the legitimate Stuarts of Sardinia, the heirs legitimate as contra-distinguished from the heirs of liberty and of right, to the throne of this realm — the illegitimate heirs I call them; [125] but the true legitimates of the world, as some are disposed to call them who do not hold that allegiance, at least who disguise that allegiance, to the house of Brunswick, which, as good subjects, we all cherish. Nay, even a prince who, I doubt not, will rank, in point of antiquity and family, even higher than the legitimate Bourbons and Stuarts — I mean his highness the dey of Tunis, received her majesty as if she was respected by all his lighter-coloured brethren in the other parts of the globe. And she was also received, in the same respectful manner, by the representative of the king at Constantinople. So that wherever she has gone, she has met from all ranks, the only persons of authority and note whom she could have had as her vindicators. She was received by all those persons of authority and note, not only not as my learned friend expected to prove, but in the very reverse manner, and as from the evidence I have now described her.

Suffer me now, my lords, to solicit your lordships indulgence, while I look a little more narrowly into the case which was thus opened, and not proved by the attorney-general. The first remark which must strike any one who attends to this discussion, is one which pervades the whole case, and is of no small importance. Is it not remarkable, that such a case, possessed as they are of such witnesses, should have been left so lame and short as they must admit it to be left, when contrasted with their Opening? Was ever a case of criminal conversation brought into court under such favourable auspices? Who are your witnesses? The very two who, of all man and woman kind, must know most of this offence, not only if it were in the daily course of being committed, but if committed at all — I mean, the body servants of the two parties, the valet of the man, and the lady's own waiting maid. Why, in common cases, these are the very witnesses the counsel are panting to have and bring into court. From the form of the action, they can hardly ever venture to bring the man's servant; but if they can get hold of one by good fortune, they consider their case must be proved; and then the only question comes to be as to mitigation of damages — for as to proving the fact, no defendant would hold out. And if you believe any part of their case, it was not from any over caution of the parties — it was [126] not from any great restraint they imposed on themselves, and, knowing that they were watched, that they took care to give the world nothing to see; because, if you believe the evidence, they had flung off all regard to decorum, all trammels of restraint, all ordinary prudence; and had given way to this guilty passion, as if they were still in the hey-day of youthful blood, and as if they were justified by those ties which render its indulgence a virtue rather than a crime. Yet, with all this want of caution — all these exhibitions of want of circumspection — the man's serving man, and the lady's waiting woman have not been able to prove more than these facts which, it is pretended, make out the charge. When I said, however, there was no caution or circumspection, I mis-stated the case. If you believe the evidence — and it is the great circumstance of improbability to which I solicit your attention — if you believe the evidence, there was every caution used by the parties themselves, to insure discovery, which the wishes and ingenuity of their most malignant adversary could have devised to promote his own designs. Observe how every part of the case is subject to this remark; and then I leave to your lordships confidently the inference that must arise from it. You will even find, that just in proportion as the different acts alleged are of a suspicious or of an atrocious nature, in exactly the same proportion do the parties take especial care that there shall be good witnesses, and many of them, in order to prove it. It would be a horrible case, if such features did not belong to it; but such features we have here abundantly; and if the witnesses are to be believed, no mortal ever acted as the Queen is represented to have done. Walking arm and arm is a most light thing; it seldom takes place except in the presence of witnesses, and many of those speaking most accurately respecting it; but sitting together in an attitude of familiar proximity which is somewhat less equivocal, is proved by several witnesses; and those who state it to have been done by the aid of placing the arms round the neck, or behind the back, and which accordingly raises it a step higher — these witnesses show you this happened when the doors were open, in the height of the sun, in a villa where hundreds of persons were walking, and when the house and villa were filled with common workmen. Several salutes were given; [127] and, as this is still higher in the scale, it appears that never was a kiss to pass between these lovers without especial pains being taken, that a third person should be by to tell the story to those who did not see it. One witness is out of the room, while Bergami is about to take his departure on a journey from the Queen, while in Sicily. They wait until he comes in, and then they kiss. When at Terracina Bergami is going to land, the whole party are on deck. The princess and Bergami retire to a cabin, and wait till Majoochi enters, and then the act is perpetrated. Sitting on a gun, or near the mast of the ship, on the knees of the paramour, is an act still higher in the scale of licentiousness — It is only proved scantily by one witness, but of that hereafter — care is taken that it should be perpetrated before eleven persons. But sitting upon a gun with the arms entwined, is such an act as leaves nothing to the imagination, except the granting of the last purposes of desire — This must be done in the presence of all the crew, of all the servants, and all the companions, by day and in the evening. The parties might be alone at night: then it was not done; but, at all other times, it is done before all the passengers and all the crew.

But the case is not left here. As your lordships might easily suppose, with persons so wary against themselves, such firm and useful allies of their accusers, such indispensable proofs of the case against them are not wanting to prove the last favour in the presence of good witnesses; and accordingly, sleeping together is not only said to have taken place habitually and nightly in the presence of all the company and all the passengers on board, but always, by land as well as by sea, did every body see it, that belonged to the party of pilgrims to Jerusalem. Nay, so far is this carried, that Bergami cannot retire into the anti-chamber where the princess is to change her clothes, or for any other purpose, without special care being taken, that the trusty, silent, honest, unintriguing Swiss waiting-maid shall be placed at the door of that anti-room, and told, "You wait here: we have occasion to retire for an hour or two and be naked together;" or at least, she is at liberty to draw what inferences she pleases from the fact.

But, my lords, I wish I could stop here. There are features of peculiar enormity in the other parts of this case; [128] and in proportion as these disgusting scenes are of a nature to annoy every one, however unconcerned in the case, who hears them; to disgust and almost contaminate the mind of every one who is condemned to listen to them — in that proportion is especial care taken that they shall not be done in a corner. The place for them is not chosen in the hidden recesses of those receptacles of abomination which the continent have too many of, under the degraded and vilified name of palaces — the place is not taken in the hidden haunts which lust has degraded to its own purposes — some island where vice concealed itself from the public eye of ancient times — it is not in those palaces, in those Capreæ of old, that the parties chose to commit such abominations; but they do it before witnesses in open day-light, when the sun is at the meridian. And that is not enough: the having them in the public high-ways is not enough: but they must have a courier of their own to witness them, without the veil of any one part of the furniture of a carriage, or of their own dress, to conceal from his eye their disgraceful situation! My lords, I ask your lordships whether vice was ever known before so unwary; whether folly was ever known so extravagant; whether unthinking passion, even in the most youthful period, when the passions swell high, and the blood boils in the veins, was ever known to act so thoughtlessly, so recklessly, so foolishly, as this case compels me to fancy? And when your lordships have put the facts to your minds, let this consideration dwell there, and let it operate as a check, when you come to examine the evidence by which the case is supported.

But all this is nothing. Their kindness to the enemy — their faithfulness to the plot against themselves, would be left short indeed, if it had gone no further than this; for it would then depend upon the good fortune of that adversary in getting hold of that witness; at least it might be questionable, whether the greater part of their precautions for their own ruin might not have been thrown away. Therefore, every one of these witnesses, without any exception, is either dismissed without a cause — for I say the causes are mere flimsinesses personified — or is refused to be taken back, upon his earnest and humble solicitations, when there was every human inducement to restore them to favour. — My lords, this is not all. [129] Knowing what she had done; recollecting; her own contrivances; aware of all these cunning and elaborate devices towards her own undoing; having before her eyes the pictures of all those schemes to render detection inevitable and concealment impossible; reflecting that she had given the last finishing stroke to this conspiracy of her own, by turning off these witnesses causelessly, and putting them into the power of her enemy; knowing that that enemy had taken advantage of her; knowing the witnesses were here to destroy her, and told that if she faced them she was undone; and desired and counselled and implored, again and again, to bethink her well before she ran so enormous a risk — the Queen comes to England, and is here, on this spot, and confronts these witnesses whom she had herself enabled to undo her. Menaced with degradation and divorce, knowing that was not an empty threat that was held out, and seeing; it was about to be accomplished, up to this hour she refuses all endeavours towards a compromise of her honour and her rights; she refuses a magnificent retreat and the opportunity of an unrestrained indulgence in all her criminal propensities, and even a safeguard and protection from the court of England, and a vindication of her honour by the two Houses of parliament. If, my lords, this is the conduct of guilt — if these are the lineaments by which vice is to be traced in the human frame — if these are the symptoms of that worst of all states, dereliction of principle carried to excess, when it almost becomes a mental disease — then I have misread human nature; then I have weakly and groundlessly come to a conclusion — for I have always understood, that guilt was wary, and innocence alone unwary.

Attend now, my lords, I beseech you, with these comments upon the general features of the case, to the sort of evidence by which such a case is attempted to be established. I should exhaust myself, besides fatiguing your lordships, if I were to pause here and make a few of the cogent remarks which offer themselves, upon the connection of that part of the case which I have now gone through, with the part I am coming to. But there are one or two points so material, that I cannot omit all mention of them before I proceed further. I will make one observation, that, if an ordinary case could not be proved by such evidence as I am now to comment upon — if [130] it would require very different proofs in the most common story, if there were no improbabilities such as I have shown — a case such as that I have now described, ought to be proved by the most convincing the most pure and immaculate testimony.

My lords; I do not intend to assert — I have no interest in stating it — that a conspiracy has been formed against the Queen, by those who are the managers of the present proceeding. I say not such a thing. I only will show your lordships, that if there had been such a measure resorted to; that if any persons had been minded to ruin her majesty by such a device, they could not have taken a better course, and probably they would not have taken a different course, from that which I think the case of the prosecution proves them already to have pursued. In any such design, the first thing to be looked to is the agents, who are to make attacks against the domestic peace of an individual, and to produce evidence of misconduct, which never took place. Who are those persons I am fancying to exist — if their existence be conceivable — who are those that they would have recourse to, to make up a story against the victim of their spiteful vengeance? First of all, they would get the servants who have lived in the house. Without them, it is almost impossible to succeed: with them, there is a most brilliant prospect of a triumphant result. Servants who have lived in the family were, in fact, all that could be desired — But, if those servants were foreigners, who were to be well tutored in their part abroad, and had to deliver their story where they were unknown, to be brought to a place to which they might never return all their days, and to speak before a tribunal which knew no more of them than they cared for it — whose threat they had no reason to dread, whose good opinion they were utterly careless of; living in a country to which they did not care two rushes whether they returned or not, and knew they never could return — those were the very identical persons such conspirators would have recourse to. But, there is a choice among foreigners. All foreigners are not made of the same materials; but, if any one country under heaven is marked out more than all the rest as the Officina for such a race, I say that country is the country of Augustus and Borgia. I speak of its perfidies, without imputing them to the country at large; but [131] there in all ages perfidy could be had for money, while there was interest to be satisfied, or spite to be indulged.

I say, my lords, that there are in Italy, as in every where else, most respectable individuals. I have myself the happiness of knowing many Italian gentlemen in whose hands I should think my life or honour as safe as in the hands of any of your lordships. But I speak of those who have not been brought here, when I so pass my opinion of them. Those who have been brought over and produced at your lordships bar, are of a far other description: — "Sunt in illo numero multi boni, docti, pudentes, qui ad hoc judicium deducti non sunt; multi impudentes, illiterati, leves; quos, variis de causis, video concitatos. Varum tamen hoc dico de toto genere Grœcorum; quibus jusjurandum jocus est; testimonium Indus; existimatio vestra tenebrœ laus, merces, gratia, gratulatio proposita est omnis in impudenti mendacio." My lords, persons of this latter description were to be gotten by various means, which the carelessness of the one party, which the wealth and power of the supposed conspirators, placed within their reach. Money, accordingly, has been given, with a liberality unheard of in any other case, even of conspiracy; and where money would not operate, power has been called in to its aid.

Having thus procured their agents — having thus intrusted them — how were they to be marshalled to compass the common design? Uniformity of agreement is above all things necessary in conspiracy. Accordingly, they are taken, one by one, and carefully examined before one and the same person, assisted by the same coadjutors and even by the same clerks — they are moved in bodies along the country, by even the same couriers; and these couriers are not the ordinary runners of the foreign office of the country which shall be nameless, who had some connexion with the spot, but special messengers, whose attention is devoted peculiarly to this department. Many of the persons intended to be used themselves as witnesses, are employed as messengers; which kept the different witnesses in the due recollection of their lesson, and had the effect of encouraging the zeal of these witnesses, by giving them an office, an interest, a concern in the plot that is going on.

Observe, then, my lords, how the drilling goes on. It is not done in a day — [132] nor a week — hardly in a year: but it extends over a long space of time; it is going on for months and years. The Board is sitting at Milan. There they sit at the receipt of perjury; there they carry on their operations — themselves ignorant, no doubt, of its being perjury; but then, so long as it continues, so much the more likely is the gross perjury to take place. The witnesses are paid for their evidence: the tale is propagated by the person receiving the money carrying it to his own neighbourhood; and he becomes the parent of a thousand tales, to be equally paid as they deserve; for one is as false as the other. You mark the care with which it is treated — there is not a witness (I mean an Italian witness) brought to this country, without previously passing through the Milan drill; because, if they had not passed through that drill, there would be a want of union and agreement. So that even the mate of the polacre, Paturzo, who was brought here to be examined on the morning after his arrival, was brought through Milan, and passed his examination before the same persons who had taken the former examinations. Aye, and the captain too, who was examined by the Board, more than a year ago, is carried by the way of Milan, to have a conversation with his old friend there, who, the year before, had examined him to the same story. Here, then, by these means recruited — with this skill marshalled — with all this apparatus and preparation made ready to come to the field where they are to operate, you have the witnesses safely landed in England; and in order that they may be removed from thence suddenly, all in a mass, they are living together while here; then they are carried over to Holland, and afterwards returned here; and finally deposited, a day or two before their well-earned services, and well earned money, I think, require them to appear before your lordships. They are kept together in masses — formerly they lived in separate rooms; it was necessary not to bring them together before; but those of feeble recollection it was necessary afterwards to keep together, for the convenience of mutual communication. There they were, communicating to each other their experiences, animated by the same feelings and hopes, founded on the same motives to the same common cause. But not only this; — according to the parts of the story which they were to make out before your lordships, they were put [133] together. There are two Piedmontese: they did not associate together in this contubernium — for I know of no other name by which to denote the place they occupied — but one of them kept company with the mate and captain of the polacre, because he tells the same story with themselves. It is needless to add, that they are here cooped up, in a state of confinement — here they are, without communicating with any body but themselves, ignorant of every thing that is going on around them, and brought from that prison by these means, in order to tell to your lordships the story which, by such means, has been got up among them.

My lords; I fear I may appear to have undervalued the character of these Italians. Suffer me, then, to fortify myself upon the subject, by saying, that I am not the person who has formed such an estimate of the lowest orders of that country. And perhaps it may be some assistance to your lordships — possibly some relief from the tedium of these comments on the statements of the evidence in support of the bill, if I carry your lordships back to a period of the history of this country, and I shall take care not to do it to any remote period, or to circumstances very dissimilar from those which mark the present day. Your lordships, I perceive, anticipate me. I naturally go back to the reign of Henry the 8th, and the proceedings against Catharine of Arragon. And I shall show your lordships in what way we have a right to view Italian testimony, though proceeding from sources calculated to establish impressions very different from the statements of discarded servants. Your lordships will find in the records of that age, in Rymer's Collection, some curious documents with respect to the proceedings of Harry the 8th. The great object, as your lordships know, was, to procure and consult the opinions — the free, unbiassed opinions — of the Italian jurists, in favour of his divorce. Rymer gives us the opinions of the professors and doctors of several of the Italian universities; and from them your lordships will see that, by a strange coincidence, these Docti gave their "free, unbiassed opinions," in nearly the same words. I shall select that of the most celebrated of the whole, which is known by the appellation of Bologna the Learned. The doctors there say, one and all, that in compliance with the request of the King, they each separately, and unconnected with his [134] fellows, had examined the case; — they had taken the care which your lordships have taken on the present occasion — and then, having well weighed the matter — "Censemus, judicamus, dicimus constantissime testamur, et indubie aftirmamur" — they say, that having sifted the question, they are one and all of opinion, that Harry the 8th has a right to divorce his queen. But it seems that, from the great similarity of the opinions of the doctors, and of the language in which they were expressed, there existed at that time much the same suspicion of a previous drilling, that there does appear to have been in a certain other case which I shall not now mention; and that to repel that suspicion, pretty nearly the same precautions were used as in this other case. Indeed, by a singular coincidence, these Doctissimi Doctores of the sixteenth century, were directed to swear — which they might do with a safe conscience — that they had never opened their mouths to one another on the subject — in the same manner that the illiterati et impudentes of the present proceeding swore, that they had never talked to one another on the subject of what each had to swear. The doctors and divines of Italy swore, on the Holy Gospel, "that they never had, directly or indirectly, communicated their sentence, or any word or thing concerning the same, by sign, word, deed, or hint, until a certain day;" — which was the day they all came to understand the matter.

Now, my lords, all this appeared, prima facie, a very sound and specious case; as every security had been taken to guard against any captious objection; and, with that character it would, probably, have passed down to posterity, if there had been no such thing as a good historian and honest man, in the person of bishop Burnet; and he, with his usual innocence, being a great advocate of Harry the 8th, in consequence of his exertions in support of the Reformation, tells the tale in the way which I am now going to state; still leaning towards that king, but undoubtedly letting out a little that is rather against himself. Harry first provided himself with an able agent; and it was necessary that he should also be a learned one. He took one, then, to whom my learned friend, the solicitor general's eulogium on the head of the Milan commission, would apply in some of the words; — a man of great probity, and singularly skilled in the laws of his country. And, by a still more [135] curious coincidence, the name of Harry's agent happened to be Cooke. "He went up and down," says Burnet, "procuring hands; and he told them he came to, that he desired they would write their conclusions, according to learning and conscience," — [as I hope has been done at Milan] — "without any respect or favour, as they would answer it at the Last Day; and he protested," — [just as I have heard some other persons do] — "that he never gave nor promised any divine any thing, till he had first freely written his mind" and he says, that "what he then gave, was rather an honourable present than a reward;" — as a compensation, not a recompence. These were the very words used in that country, at that time — as they have been, recently, in this.

Now, we have a letter from this agent — as who knows two hundred years hence there may not be letters from Milan? — There is a letter of Cooke's to Henry the eighth, dated the 1st of July, 1530, in which he says, "My fidelity bindeth me to advantage your highness, that all Lutherans be utterly against your highness in this cause, and have told as much, with their wretched power, malice without reason or authority, as they could and might; but I doubt not." says he,"that all Christian Universities" — Christian contradistinguished from Lutheran! — "that all Christian ministers, if they be well handled, will earnestly conclude with your highness. Albeit, gracious lord" — now comes he to expound what he means by the well-handling of the Christian Universities — "albeit, gracious lord, if that I had in time been sufficiently furnished with money; albeit, I have, beside this seal, procured unto your highness 110 subscriptions; yet, it had been nothing, in comparison of that that I might easily and would have done. And herein I inclose a bill specifying by whom and to whom I directed my said letters, in most humble wise beseeching your most royal clemency to ponder my true love and good endeavouring, and not suffer me to be destitute of money, to my undoing, and the utter loss of your most high causes here." Now this, my lords, undoubtedly is the outward history of this transaction; but we have only seen the accounts of Bishop Burnet and of the agent Cooke. But, happily, the Italian agent employed by. Henry the 8th, one Peter à Ghinnuciis, the Vimercati of that day, left his papers behind [136] him, and we are furnished with the original tariff, by which the value of the opinions of these Italian doctors and divines were estimated. "Item, to a Servite friar, when he subscribed, one crown; to a Jew, one crown; to the doctor of the Servites, two crowns; to the observant friars two crowns; Item, to the prior of St. John's and St. Paul's, who wrote for the king's cause, fifteen crowns" — the author was better paid then than the advocate; as often happens in better times — "Item, given to John Maira, for his expense of going to Milan, and for rewarding the doctors there, thirty crowns." There is a letter also from the bishop of Worcester to Cooke, directing, that he should not promise rewards, except to them that lived by them, to the Canonists who did not use to give their opinions without a fee. "The others he might get cheaper" — those he must open his hand to; because, he says, the Canonists, the Civilians, did not use to give an opinion without a fee. Bishop Burnet, with the native simplicity and honesty of his character, sums up all this with remarking, that these Italian doctors "must have had very prostituted consciences, when they could be hired so cheap. It is true, that Cooke, in many of his letters, says, that if he had had money enough, he could get the hands of all the Divines in Italy; for he found the greatest part of them were mercenary."

My lords; the descendants of those Divines and Doctors, I am sorry to say, have rather improved than backslidden from the virtues of their ancestors; and, accordingly, I trust your lordships will permit me to bring the tale down to the present day, to connect the present proceeding with the Divorce of Harry the 8th's time. I trust your lordships will allow me to read to you the testimony, given in the year 1792, of a native of Italy, of distinguished family, who was employed in a diplomatic character, by an august individual, who was near being the victim of an Italian conspiracy — he published a letter, and it is evidence, I say, because it was published before the whole Italian nation in their own tongue, and it states what Italian evidence is made of; and he addressed it, with his name, to the prime minister of the country, that minister enjoying the highest civil and military authority there, and being by descent a subject of the British crown — I mean general Acton. "To the dishonour of [137] human nature," says the writer, "there is nothing at Naples so notorious as the free and public sale of false evidence. Their ordinary tariff is three or four ducats, according to the necessities of those who sell, and the occasions of those who buy it. If, then, you would support a suit, alter a will, or forge a hand-writing, you have only to cast away remorse and open your purse — the shop of perjury is ever open." It poured in upon him in a full tide: he made his appeal in such words as I have now read: he and his royal master, who was implicated in the charge, were acquitted by such an appeal; and I now repeat it, when such evidence is brought to support charges as atrocities, as ruinous, and far more incredible in themselves, than that an Italian should have suborned an agent to injure a fellow creature.

My lords; I have been drawn aside from the observations I was making, generally, of the manner in which this Case has been prepared. I pray your lordships to observe how these witnesses all act after they come into court: and the first thing that must strike an observer here, is the way in which they mend their evidence — how one improves upon the other after an interval of time — and how each improves, when required, upon himself. I can only proceed, my lords, in dealing with this subject of conspiracy and false swearing, by sample: but I will take the one that first strikes me; and I think it will effectually illustrate my proposition. Your lordships must remember the manner in which my learned friend, the attorney-general, opened the case of Mahomet, the dancer. Again, I take his own words: "A man of the most brutal and depraved habits, who at the Villa d'Este exhibited the greatest indecencies at various times, in the presence of her majesty and Bergarni — exhibitions which are too disgusting to be more than alluded to — the most indecent attempts to imitate the sexual intercourse. — This person deserves not the name of a man" — said the attorney-general. Now, my lords, I take this instance, because it shows the proposition that I was stating to your lordships, better than any other, perhaps. All show it, to a degree; but this, best of all; because I have shown your lordships how careful the attorney-general is in opening the Case, and how strong [138] his expressions are; consequently, he felt the importance of this fact; he knew how damaging it would be to the Queen; he knew it was important to state this, and he felt determined not to be disappointed when he had once and again failed — he brought three witnesses; and if one would not swear the first time, he brought him again. Now, my lords, if I show the symptoms of mending and patching in such a case, it operates as volumes against that case; and if your lordships find it here, you may guess it is not wanting elsewhere. But here it is most manifestly to be seen. Your lordships plainly perceived what it was that these witnesses were intended to say. You no sooner heard the first question put — you no sooner heard the leading questions with which the solicitor-general followed it, than you must have known it was expected, that an indecent act would be sworn to — that it would be sworn it was an exhibition of the most gross and indecent description; and one part of the evidence I can hardly recount to your lordships. Now see, my lords, how the first witness swore — this is their first and main witness, who is brought to prove their whole case — Majoochi. He will only allow — and this is the first stage in which this deity of theirs is brought before your lordships — he will only allow it is a dance. "Did you observe any thing else? — the usual answer, "Non mi ricordo; but if there was, "I have not seen it," and "I do not know." "Was any thing done by Mahomet, upon that occasion, with any part of his dress?" says the solicitor-general, evidently talking from what he had seen written down: — "He made use of the linen of his large pantaloons." — "How did he use his trowsers? Did he do any thing with the linen of his pantaloons or trowsers?" "His trowsers were always in the same state as usual." Here, then, was a complete failure — no shadow of proof of those mysteries which this witness was expected to divulge. This was when he was examined on the Tuesday. On the Friday, with the interval of two days — and your lordships, for reasons best known to yourselves, but which must have proceeded from justice guided by wisdom, which is never more seen or evidenced than in varying the course of conduct, and adapting to new circumstances the actions we [139] wish to do — which will not, if it be perfect in its kind, and absolute in its degree, suffer by the deviation; for that reason alone, in order that injustice might not be done (for what, in one case, may be injurious to a defendant, may be expected mainly to assist a defendant in another) — Your lordships, not with a view to injure the Queen — your lordships, with a view to further the ends of justice, allowed the Evidence to be printed, which afforded to the witnesses if they wished it, means to mend and improve upon their evidence — Your lordships allowed this, solely with the intention of gaining for the Queen that unanimous verdict, which the country has pronounced in her favour, by looking at the Case against her — your lordships, however, allowed all the evidence against her to be published, from day to day. Accordingly, about two days intervened between Majoochi's evidence, and the evidence of Birollo; during which time, Birollo had access to Majoochi's deposition, as well as to his person; and it is no little assistance, if we have not only access to the witness, but to his testimony; because he may forget what he has sworn, and it is something that he should see, as well as the second and the mending witness, the story he has told. Accordingly, with the facility which this gave him, came forward Birollo, after two days interval, he improves upon the store; from a dance, and from the usual handling, or ordinary use of the trowsers, he made a rotula or roll. The witness then begins to hint at some indecency; but he does not mention it. He starts and draws back. For my part, I cannot tell what he meant; and he really adds something which he, in his own wicked imagination, might think indecent, but he was forced to admit he did not know what it meant. But, on the Wednesday following, a witness comes, and he finishes it altogether. He improves even upon Birollo; and he tells you, in plain downright terms, that which I have a right to say is, because I know I can prove it to be, false — which I have a right to say, before proving it, was false; because I know the same dance was witnessed by wives and daughters, as modest and pure as any of your lordships have the happiness of possessing — by wives and daughters of your lordships in those countries. [140] Now, another improvement and mending, suffer me, my lords, to advert to; for it runs through the whole case. I do not even stop to offer any comment upon the non mi ricordo of Majoochi; nor on the extraordinary fact of that answer being regularly dropped by the other witnesses, as soon as the impression which the repetition had made on the public mind was fully understood; but I wish to call your lordships attention to the more important point of money. No sooner had Gargiulo the captain, and Paturzo the mate of the polacre, proved that they were brought here by sums so inadequate to the service, by sums so infinitely beyond even the most ample remuneration for their work; that they were bribed by sums such as Italians in their situation never dreamed of — no sooner had this fact dropped out, than one and all of them are turned into disinterested witnesses, not one of whom ever received a shilling by way of compensation for what they did. "Half-a-crown a day for the loss of my time, my travelling expenses, and a few stivers to feed my family!" The expectation of his expenses being paid, began in the instance of the cook, Birollo. He told you, he had nothing at all but his trouble for coming here. "Do you expect nothing I hope to go soon home to find my master." The cook at first was offered and refused money. The others had nothing offered — Demont nothing! — Sacchi nothing! — though true, he, a courier, turns out to be a man of large property, and says, "Thank God! I have always been in easy circumstances" — thank God! with a gratitude truly edifying. A man who must have a servant of his own — who had one in England — who must live here at the expense of four or five hundred pounds a year, which is equal to fourteen or fifteen hundred in Italy, goes to be a courier, is angry at being turned off, and is anxious to return to that situation! I believe the captain and the mate. They avowed that what they had was enormous payment; and the other witnesses, hearing of the effect of that confession, have, one and all, denied having received any thing, and would not confess that they had any future expectations.

The last of these general observations with which I shall trouble your lordships, and which I own I think your lordships [141] must have been impatient I should come to, is with regard to the great blanks among the witnesses for the prosecution — I mean, the fewness of those witnesses, compared with what their own testimony, and their own statement that introduced it, show your lordships they ought to have called. My lords, I conjure you to attend to this circumstance, for it is a most important point in the whole of this case. I say, that if I had not another argument to urge, I should stand confidently upon this ground. If the case were as ordinary as it is extravagant — if it were as probable as it is loaded in every feature with the grossest improbabilities — if it were in the common course of human events, that such occurrences as those which have been alleged should have happened, as it is the very reverse — I should still stand confidently and steadily upon that part of the case to which I have now happily arrived. I know, my lords, that it is bold — I know that it is bold even to rashness — to say so much of any point before I have begun to hint at it; but I feel so perfectly, so intimately convinced, that in such a case as the present, the circumstance to which I refer ought to be fatal to the bill before your lordships, that I consider myself as even acting prudently, in declaring, by anticipation, what I hold to be its character.

My lords; the attorney-general told us, that there were rumours at Naples, why the Queen's ladies left her — it turned out, that instead of leaving her, one had joined her at Naples, one had joined her at Leghorn, and another at Genoa afterwards — but my learned friend said, that one left her, and one or two others staid behind, and rumours were not wanting, that their doing so was owing to the impropriety of her majesty's conduct. Rumours! My learned friend may say, that these were rumours which he was unable to prove. But if they were rumours which had any foundation whatever — if they were such rumours as my learned friend had a right to allude to (even if he had a right to refer to rumour at all, which I deny) — if there was a shadow of foundation for those rumours, why did he not call the obvious witnesses to prove it? Where were those ladies, women of high rank and elevated station in society, well-known in their own country, loved, esteemed, and respected, as women upon whose character not a vestige of imputation has ever rested — women of talents as well as [142] character — the very persons to have brought forward, if he had dared bring them forward; and the very signal, and I had almost said extravagant contrast to all the witnesses, but two, whom my learned friend did venture to call to your lordships' bar? why were they not produced to your lordships? why had not your lordships — why had not we the benefit of having the Case proved against us, in the manner in which any judge sitting at the Old Bailey, would command, upon pain of an acquittal, any prosecutor to prove against any ordinary felon? Certainty, they were in our employment; they were in some way connected with our interest; they received salaries from the Queen, and might be supposed to be amicably disposed towards us. My lords, is there in all that, the shadow of a shade of a reason why they should not have been adduced? I am not speaking, my lords, in a civil action. I am not dealing with a plaintiff's case, in a suit upon a bill of exchange for twenty pounds. I am not even speaking in a case of misdemeanor, or a case of felony, or the highest crime known in the law, between which and the act alleged against my illustrious client it is difficult to draw simply a technical distinction. But I stand here on a bill of Pains and Penalties, which your lordships are not bound to pass; which you may give the go-by to; which you are not bound to say aye, or no, to. Your lordships are not sitting as commissioners to try a case of high treason. Gracious God! is this a case in which the prosecutor is to be allowed to bring forward half a case? Is this an occasion on which the prosecutor is to be allowed to say, "These witnesses I will not call. True it is, they are the best. True it is, that they are respectable; and that they are unimpeachable, no man can deny. If they swear against the Queen, she is utterly undone. But I will not call them. I will leave them for you to call. They are not my witnesses, but yours. You call them. They came from your vicinity. They are not tenants of Cotton-garden, and therefore I dare not, I will not, produce them; but when you call them, we shall see what they state, and if you do not call them" — in the name of justice, what? Say. For shame, in this temple, this highest temple of justice, to have her most sacred rule so profaned, that I am to be condemned in the plenitude of proof, if guilt is — that I [143] am to be condemned unless I run counter to the presumption which rules in all courts or justice, that I am innocent until I am proved guilty; and that my case is to be considered as utterly ruined, unless I call my adversaries witnesses! My lords, my lords, if you mean ever to show the face of those symbols by which Justice is known to your country, without making it stand an eternal condemnation of yourselves, I call upon you instantly to dismiss this case and for this reason; and I will say not another word upon the subject. My lords, perhaps your lordships will allow me a short interval, as I am now coming upon another part of the Case.

[Having retired for three quarters of an hour, Mr. Brougham proceeded as follows:]

My lords; I have humbly to return my thanks to your lordships, for the indulgence with which you have kindly favoured me. I have now to solicit the attention of your lordships, and I am afraid at greater length than any thing could justify but the unparalleled importance of the occasion, to a consideration more in detail of the Evidence by which this Case has been attempted to be supported. And, in point of time, as indeed of importance, the first figure that was presented to your lordships in the group, must naturally have arisen to your recollection the moment I announced my intention of going into any particular detail of the merit of the different witnesses — I mean Theodore Majoochi of happy memory, who will be long known in this country, and every where else, much after the manner in which ancient sages have reached our day, whose names are lost in the celebrity of the little saying by which each is now distinguished by mankind, and in which they were known to have embodied the practical result of their own experience and wisdom; and, as long as those words which he so often used in the practice of that art and skill which he had acquired by long experience and much care — as long as those words shall be known among men, the image of Majoochi, without naming him, will arise to their remembrance. My lords, this person is a witness of great importance; he was the first called, and the latest examined; continuing by the case and accompanying it throughout. His evidence almost extended over the whole of the period through which the Case and the charge [144] itself extends; in fact, only dismissed, or rather retiring from the Queen's service, and refused to be taken back, about the time when the charge closed. He and Demont stand aloof from the rest of the witnesses, and resemble each other in this particular, that they go through the whole case. They are, indeed, the great witnesses to prove it; they are the witnesses for the bill; the others being confirmatory only of them; but, as willing witnesses are wont to do — as those who have received much and been promised more, they were zealous on behalf of their employers, and did not stop short of the two main witnesses, but they each carried the case a great deal further. This is, generally, with a view to their relative importance, the character of all the witnesses.

Now only let me entreat your lordships attention, while I enter on this branch of the subject, a little more in detail. I have often heard it remarked, that the great prevailing feature of Majoochi's evidence — his want of recollection — signifies, in truth, but little; because a man may forget — memories differ. I grant that they do. Memories differ, as well as honesty, in man. I do not deny that. But I think I shall succeed in showing your lordships, that there is a sort of memory that is utterly inconsistent with any degree of honesty in any man, which I can figure to myself. But why do I talk of fancy for I have only to recollect Majoochi; and I know cases, in which I defy the wit of man to conceive stronger or more palpable instances of false swearing, than may be conveyed to the hearers and to the court in the remarkable words "Non mi recordo — I do not remember." I will not detain your lordships, by pointing out cases, where the answer, "I do not remember" would be innocent, where it might be meritorious, where it might be confirmatory of his evidence, and a support to his credit. Neither need I adduce cases where such an answer would I be the reverse of this — where it would be t destructive to his credit, and the utter demolition of his testimony. I will not quote any of those cases. I shall content myself with taking the evidence of Majoochi as it stands: for if I had been lecturing on evidence, I should have said — as the innocent forgetfulness is familiar to every man, so is the guilty forgetfulness; and in giving an instance, I should just have found it all in Majoochi's actual evidence.

[145] Now, at once, to give your lordships proof positive that this man is perjured — proof I shall show to be positive, from his mode of forgetting. In the first place, I beg your lordships attention to the way in which this witness swore hardily in chief, eke as hardily in cross-examination, to the position of the rooms of her Majesty and Bergami. The great object of the attorney-general, as shown by his opening, was that for which the previous concoction of this plan by these witnesses had prepared him; namely, to prove the position of the Queen's and Bergami's rooms always to have been favourable to the commission of adultery, by showing that they were near and had a mutual communication; whereas, the rooms of all the rest of the suite were distant and cut off; and the second part of that statement was just as essential as the first, to make it the foundation of the inference of guilt which ft was meant to support. Accordingly, the first witness, who was to go over their whole case, appears to have been better prepared on this point, than any ten that followed — more inferences — more forgetfulness in detail — perfect recollection to attack the Queen — utter forgetfulness to protect himself from the sifting of a cross-examination. "Where did the Queen and Bergami sleep?" "Her majesty slept in an apartment near that of Bergami." "Were those apartments near, or remote? for it was often so good a thing to get them near and communicating with each other, that it was pressed again and again. "Where were the rest of the suite; were they distant or near?" says the solicitor-general. This was at Naples; and this is a specimen of the rest — for more was made of that proximity at Naples than any where else — "Were they near or distant?" "They were apart." The word in Italian was lontano, which was interpreted "apart." I remarked, however, at the time, that it meant "distant;" and distant it meant, or it meant nothing. Here, then, the witness had sworn distinctly, from his positive recollection, and had staked his credit on the truth of a fact, and also of his recollection of it — upon this fact, whether or not the Queen's room was near Bergami's with a communication? But no less had he put his credit upon this other branch of his statement, essential to the first, in order to make both combined the foundation of a charge of criminal intercourse, "that the rest of the suite were lodged [146] apart and distant." There is an end, then, of innocent forgetfulness, if, when I come to ask, where the rest slept, he either tells me, "I do not know," or "I do not recollect;" because he had known and must have recollected that when he presumed to say to my learned friends, these two rooms were alone near and connected, the others were distant and apart — when he said that, he affirmed his recollection of the proximity of those rooms and the remoteness of the others. He swore that at first, and afterwards said, "I know not," or "I recollect not," and perjured himself as plainly as if he had told your lordships one day that he saw a person, and the next said he never saw him in his life — the one is not a more gross or diametrical contradiction than the other. Trace him, my lords, in his recollection and forgetfulness — observe where he remembers and where he forgets — and you will find the same conclusion following you every where, and forcing the same conviction. I will give one specimen from the evidence itself, to show your lordships he has no lack of memory when it is to suit his purpose — when it is to prove a story where he has learned his lesson and when he is examined in chief — when, in short, he knows who is dealing with him, and is only anxious to carry on the attack — I will show your lordships what his recollection is made of. You shall have a fair sample of his recollection here. I asked him —

The Lord Chancellor — In what page of the printed Minutes, Mr. Brougham?

Mr. Brougham — In page 47, my lord.

The Earl of Liverpool suggested, that the learned gentleman, when he quoted from the printed Minutes of Evidence, should specify the folio.

Mr. Brougham proceeded — I asked him, "Have you ever seen the Villa d'Este since the time you came back from the long voyage? He had been examined in chief upon this, and had stated distinctly, with respect to the Villa d'Este, the state of the rooms, and I wanted to show the accuracy of his recollection on those parts where he was well drilled — "Have you ever seen the Villa d'Este since the time you came back from the long voyage?" "I have." — Was the position of the rooms the same as it had been before with respect to the Queen and Bergami? "They were not in the same situation and before." — Then the witness gives a very minute particular of the alterations — a small corridor was on one side of the [147] princess's room on her return. "Was there a sitting room on the other side of it, not opposite, but on one of the other sides of it?" Now attend, my lords, to the particularity — " There was a small corridor, on the left of which, there was a door that led into the room of the princess, which was only locked; and then going a little further on in the corridor, there was on the left hand a small room, and opposite to this small room there was another door which led into the room where they supped in the evening" — There was this supping-room on the right, there was a door which led into Bergaini's room, and on the same right hand of the same room there was a small alcove, where there was the bed of Bartolomeo Bergami. — " How many doors were there in the small sitting-room where they supped?" — "I saw two doors open always, but there was a third stopped by a picture." — "Where did her royal highness's maid sleep?" "On the other side, in another apartment." — Now, my lords, can any recollection be more minute, more accurate, more perfect in every respect, than Majoochi's recollection is of all these minute details, which he thinks it subservient to his purpose to give distinctly, be they true or be they not — I do not deny them — my case is, that much of what is true is brought forward; but they graft falsehood on it. If an individual were to invent a story entirely; if he were to form it completely of falsehoods, the result would be his inevitable detection; but if he build a structure of falsehood on the foundation of a little truth, he may raise a tale which, with a good deal of drilling, may put an honest man's life, or an illustrious princess's reputation, in jeopardy. If the whole edifice, from top to bottom, should be built on fiction, it was sure to fall; but if it was built on a mixture of facts, it might put any honest man's life or reputation in jeopardy. Now, I only wish your lordships to contrast this accuracy of recollection, upon this subject and upon many other points — a few of which I shall give you specimens of — with his not having the slightest recollection of a whole new wing having been added to the princess's villa. He recollects the slightest alteration of a bed-room or a door; but he has not the slightest recollection of the throwing up a new wing to that house. This memory of his at least [148] is a capricious memory But I will show your lordships that it is a dishonest one also. Of the same nature is his evidence when any calculation of time is required. He observes the most trifling distinction of time when it suits his purpose; and he recollects nothing of time when it is inconvenient for his object. In proof of this, I request your lordships to refer again to the celebrated scene at Naples. There this witness remembers down to minutes, the exact time her majesty passes, upon two occasions, into Bergami's room — upon the first occasion, she remains there from ten to fifteen minutes; on the second, from fifteen to eighteen minutes: that is to say, taking the medium, sixteen and a half minutes, true time. Upon another occasion, he tells you an affair lasted a quarter of an hour. Upon another occasion he fired a gun, and then altogether fifteen minutes elapse — a quarter of an hour there. He is equally accurate about three quarters of an hour in another instance; that is, at Genoa, which I have spoken of before. The other instance was on the voyage. All this was in answer to my learned friend; all this was in the examination in chief all this was thought by the witness essential to his story — all this garnishes the detail of which the story is made up, and gives it that appearance of accuracy which was essential to the witness's purpose. But when I come to ask him the time, and when the answer would be of use to the Queen — when it was of use, not to the prosecution, but to the defence — see how totally he is lost! then he does not know whether they travelled all night, whether they travelled for four hours or eight hours. In answer to a question upon that subject, he says, "I had no watch, I do not know the length of time." No watch! possibly. And did not know the length of time very likely. But had you a watch when you saw the Queen go into the room of Bergami? Did you accidentally know the time when it suited your purpose to know it to a minute? Why know the precise time so accurately on one occasion, and be so totally ignorant of it on another? He pleaded the want of a watch only when it would have suited the purpose of the defence and brought out the truth; or, what comes to the same thing, have convicted himself. With respect to the category of numbers, he cannot tell whether there were two or two and twenty sailors aboard the polacre. [149] He cannot tell with respect to place, that other category of his deposition. Although he slept in the hold, he does not know where the others slept — he cannot tell where they were at night or by day — he knows they were on deck in the day, but he cannot say where they were at night. In short, I ask your lordships, whether a witness with a more convenient memory ever appeared in a court of justice?

But this is not all, my lords. There is much in the evidence of this man, in which the answer, "I do not recollect," or, "I do not know," cannot, by possibility, be true, if the answers given in the examination in chief be true: as, in the first instance which I gave you at Naples; if the minuteness sworn to in his examination in chief was true, and founded in fact, it is impossible that he should have no recollection of the matters to which he was cross-examined. If it was true, that the rooms and doors were as he described them, he could not, by possibility, know and recollect that fact, and be in total ignorance of the other parts of the house. In the same manner, when I examine him respecting Mr. Hughes, a banker's clerk at Bristol, he knows nothing of the name, nothing of his being a banker's clerk, never knew a banker's clerk, has no recollection of him. But when he sees that I have got hold of a letter of his which he knew nothing about at that time, which he perhaps forgot having committed himself by — the moment he sees that, and before I ask him a single word to refresh his memory, you plainly see by his demeanor and the tone of his answer, that he had never forgotten Mr. Hughes, and that he never had forgotten that he was a banker's clerk. "Oh!" he says, "I was in the habit of calling him brother, it was a joke on account of the familiarity in which we were." Thus it appears, that the familiarity makes him forget a man of that kind, although he says that familiarity was the ground of his calling him familiarly and habitually "brother." It was manifest, that Majoochi was not very well pleased to recollect all that passed in that family, he being a married man, and having made a proposal of marriage to a female there, which he attempted to laugh off — with what success, I will leave your lordships to judge. He was not willing to recollect the name, or trade, or connection with that family, until he knew that all was known.

[150] But, my lords, before we have done with Majoochi, we have other instances of that extraordinary instrument, as it has been called, I mean, memory: we have other instances of its caprices. Your lordships recollect the shuffling, prevaricating answers he gave respecting the receipt of money. He first said, he had received money from lord Stewart to carry him to Milan. He afterwards, twice over, swears he never received money at Vienna from any person — then comes the answer, which I can only give in his own words; for none other will give an adequate idea of his style. He says, "I remember to have received no money when I arrived at Milan; I remember I did not: non so;' I do not know: 'più no;' more no than yes: non mi ricordo;' I do not remember."!

Now, my lords, I have a little guess what sort of an evidence this Majoochi gave when he was laying the foundations of that favour which he has since uninterruptedly enjoyed in the counsels of our adversaries. I mean, the attorney and solicitor-general. When he was laying these foundations, deep and wide, upon which his fortune was to be built, your lordships will perceive, that he recollected a great deal which he is now ignorant of. In the opening speech of my learned friend much was stated which this witness was expected to prove, and of which I have before given your lordships an instance or two, and which I will not repeat, further than to remind your lordships, that Majoochi was to have proved the kissing in the room between that of the princess and Bergami at Naples. On the contrary, the witness negatives it in the completest manner, by his saying it was only "whispering," and not kissing. This single instance shows the whole character of this man's testimony; but I will remind your lordships of one or two others, not so striking from the nature of them, but just as fatal to the credit of the witness; because they all show, that he had told one story to the instructors of my learned friends, from which they put their questions, and another to your lordships. When questioned here as to those points, he was staggered for some reason; probably from knowing the facts and documents which had got in my possession, but more probably from having forgotten part of his story. This is just one of [151] the means by which to detect a contrived plot. This partial forgetfulness is much more likely to take place, where the whole is an invention, than where there is truth at the foundation of the testimony. So it is in this case. Majoochi recollects part of his testimony. "Yes," is ready for the question: but parts of it he did not recollect. For it is perfectly evident, that what a person has actually seen is more intensely and firmly impressed on his mind and recollection, than what he has invented and imagined. I am referring, my lords, to the solicitor-general's examination of Majoochi. He is asked, "Did you bring Bergami any broth?" "Often." He then states, that he was ordered to sleep in a cabinet adjoining Bergami's room, and that when there, pretending to be asleep, the princess passed through to the room of Bergami, and then he is asked, "After the princess had entered the bed-room of Bergami, did you hear any conversation?" — that would have been enough; it is not a leading question, but it would have been enough to make the witness recollect; but conversation was not what my learned friend was after — "Did you hear any conversation, or any thing else." That was a hint. The man had said something before, which had been taken down, and was in my learned friend's hand. Now, there was something there which he had said before, and my learned friend wanted to get that out here. If it had been true, why should not he recollect it? But he forgot it. He forgot part of his own invention; a situation to which a certain class of men, that I shall not now mention, are often exposed. So my learned friend, skilfully enough, said, "Did you hear any conversation, or any thing else, pass between them?" "Only some whispers." Now, do your lordships want to know whether my learned friend meant whispering? I say, No. I say, I read as much as if I saw the printed paper which was in his hand. My learned friend, the attorney-general, had opened very differently; but, besides, from the examination of the solicitor-general, it is evident, that more than whispering was expected. If Majoochi had never before said, that something more than whispering had passed between the parties, my learned friend would have been satisfied. But he proceeds to ask him, "Do you recollect having heard or observed any thing when the princess was in Bergami's [152] room the second time?" "Whispering conversation," says he again. — Another instance of the same sort occurs, and I hope it will not be thought too minute to go into it; for it is only in this way that conspiracies are detected. My lords, there was a story told about the princess riding on an ass. "At Genoa, you saw her royal highness riding upon an ass?" "Yes." There was a great deal more in his former statement than he dared say now. "Did you, upon these occasions, make any observations as to any thing that passed between the princess and Bergami?" "Yes." — My learned friend thought he was quite secure there. It is not a thing that happens every day to see a princess of Wales riding about on an ass. "State what passed at the time she was riding on an ass?" "He took her round her waist to put her upon the ass." My learned friend thought he was safe landed. "What else?" "He held her" — Aye, that will do very well — a great deal may be done with the word "holding" — a great deal depends on the tenure — "He held her hand lest her royal highness should fall." Aye, that won't do. My learned friend is not satisfied with that. Indeed, he must have been satisfied easily, if that had contented him. But, having something in his hand which the witness had sworn to before, and convinced it must be brought to his recollection again — not knowing he was trying to do a very difficult thing, namely, to make a false swearer recollect his fiction, but trying, as he thought, to make a true man recollect what he had actually seen — my learned friend proceeded — "Did you make any other observation?" "I have made no other observation — they spoke; they discoursed." And there are a number of anecdotes of the same sort — the breakfast at the Benedictine Convent, and other things, which were equally inventions — with this difference, that, as always happens to men engaged in such a vile concern, they forget parts that are just as specific and clear as the parts they recollect; and which, if they had been true, they would have recollected just as well.

I might remind your lordships, upon this head of Majoochi's evidence, of the incredible nature of his story respecting [153] what took place at Naples. He would have you to believe, my lords, having free access to the bed-room of Bergami, through other rooms, in which no persons slept — which access, he was compelled, after repeated prevarications, much equivocal swearing, and several positive denials, at length to admit, after a very pressing examination — having admitted that there was this secret, easy, safe access to that place of guilt, the bed-room of Bergami, he states, that she preferred the other way, where she knew Majoochi slept, where she saw that he slept in a bed without curtains, in a room so small, that she could not go through without almost touching that bed — in a room in which there was a fire to give light. But, what is the most monstrous thing of all, he tells you, that her majesty, in order to make her detection inevitable, as she passed through the room, went to the bed and looked him in the face, to ascertain whether he was asleep! Now, my lords, this whole story defeats itself, and discredits the teller. You cannot believe it; it carries its own refutation along with it. What! my lords, are you to suppose that her majesty voluntarily passed through a room where she must have been seen if the person was awake, when she knew she might have gone another way, where she would not have been seen? She knew, my lords, that Majoochi slept in that room — she knew the disposition of his bed — she knew that there was a fire kept in the room; — knowing all this, she voluntarily passes through it, stopping in her way to look the witness straight in the face My lords, I say, that this is a plain invention — an invention natural enough to come into the head of a person who lives in a country where nightly robberies are committed. I will not say that this witness is a person who had known more nearly that offence, and the precautions taken by those who commit it; but he, at least, was surrounded by adepts in the art, and we generally find in stories of robbers, that identical particular inserted — the robber comes to the bed of the lady (and if there is a lady concerned, so much the better) and looks with a candle near her face, to ascertain whether she is asleep. If she is asleep, it is all well contrived; but if she is awake, and might give the alarm, he does not care about the alarm, and coolly retires. It is very wise and prudent in the robber to take this precaution. But, for a person who is [154] going to commit adultery in the next room, whose face is as well known to the man in bed as any face that can be mentioned, to go up to his bed-side with a candle, in order to discover whether he is asleep or not, is a proceeding altogether incredible. What, my lords, would not the simple fact of her majesty having been seen in that room, under such circumstances, have exposed her? Would not the fact of being detected in looking in the face of Majoochi, have of itself, condemned her? The tale is most monstrous and incredible. But it is providentially and most happily ordained, for the detection of guilt, and the justification of innocence, that such inventions are often carelessly put together; and, in this instance, in particular, there has been but little caution used in putting the materials together; and this part has been peculiarly thoughtlessly cast.

Now, my lords, I wish, before I dismiss my observations on these stories, I might recall to your lordships attention what this witness has said on another point. He told you, that Bergami began to dine at the table of the princess at Genoa; when it is notorious that he did not begin to dine with her until some months afterwards. I might recall to your lordships attention that, in speaking of the night-scene at Genoa, he does not recollect Vinescati, the courier, arriving: even he says, as the thing is much mixed up with fiction, he had forgotten that, and he did not remember his arrival at all — "Do you remember at any time of the night knocking at the door of Bergami's bed-room, and endeavouring to wake him?" "I do remember." — "Upon what occasion was that? for what purpose?" "It was in the night when Vinescati came, and I went to knock." Then, recollecting the contradiction, he said, it was not the night Vinescati arrived, but the night thieves got into the house, and then he drops the courier altogether.

But, my lords, I come to what happened late in the day. Your lordships recollect the account this witness gave of his leaving the service of her majesty — an account which contains as much gross and deliberate falsehood as ever polluted the walls of a court of justice; and allow me here, my lords, to observe, that where you see one material part of a person's evidence grossly and palpably false, it dispenses with the necessity of going more into detail — it is not necessary to prove [155] him a perjurer throughout — the whole of his evidence must be discredited — nothing that falls from the lips of a perjured man ought to be entertained. My lords, in giving you an account of his leaving the service of the princess, the witness thought necessary, in order to raise his character, I suppose, to flourish about the cause of his quitting her service. He denied that he had been dismissed by her royal highness. He said that he left the service, because he did not like the people by whom she was surrounded. This he said, for the double purpose of raising his own credit, and debasing the Queen's and the society by which she was surrounded. But, my lords, this story is false; and I will show the falsehood from his own mouth. When a question was put to him, "Did you not apply to be taken back?" what was his answer — "I do not recollect." Here, my lords, you see how he defends and protects himself; for if he had answered, No, he knew we might have called a witness who would have convicted him at once. He was then asked, "Did you ever apply to Schiavini to make interest for your being taken back in He answers, "Once I did." Now a man might have recollected that, after being told, and might innocently have forgotten in answer to the first question; but then he would not have immediately recollected all the circumstances; for, the moment that string was touched, his recollection was entire, his forgetfulness quitted him, and he told us the whole history of the matter; and a very material thing it is for your lordships to attend to. He says, "Yes, yes" — Si, si, was his expression; but it was in a sort of joke, just as a person applies "I made the application in joke." That may be so; but if he did not make it in joke, he has perjured himself; if he did make this application in joke, to what follows, he must have answered, No. "Did you or did you not make repeated applications to Hieronimus also to be taken back into her royal highness's service "This could not be all a joke; you could not have joked with several persons on the same string. "Non mi recordo" — "this I do not remember." Now, I say, my lords, that either this last "Non mi recordo" is gross and wilful perjury, or the first story is gross and wilful perjury, that he left the Queen from his horrors of the bad people by whom she was surrounded, or that he made his application to Schiavini in pure [156] joke. There is no way out of this dilemma. The two stories are utterly inconsistent. But your lordships recollect the way in which he told you that he never wished to go back to his service. It was done with some flourish and figure. He said, with some indignation, "Rather than go to serve her royal highness, on account of the persons that are about her, I will go and eat grass." I ask your lordships, is that the saying of a true or a false man, when he pretends that he would rather eat grass than go back to a house, where he made one application which he pretends to have been a joke, and afterwards will not swear he did not make several applications to get back to the same bad house? My lords, here, I say, is developed the mystery of Majoochi and his non mi recordo. My lords, this was his protection and his shelter. My lords, I say that rank falsehood appears on the face of this part of the evidence, take it one way or the other; and I care not which of the two branches of the alternative is taken.

My lords; I now wish to call the attention of your lordships, for a moment, to the next witnesses; but it shall only be for a moment; because I have already anticipated, in part, what I had to say of them — I mean those well-paid swearers, the captain and the mate of the polacre. Now first, as to the mate, there is something in the demeanor of a witness more consonant to a candid and a true story, than the pertness with which that person answered several questions; and all those who have been accustomed to see witnesses in a court of justice know, that those who are stating falsehoods are extremely apt to give flippant and impertinent answers. The mate of the polacre is precisely a witness of this kind. Upon being asked, "Was the little gun you spoke of upon the deck?" he answers, "On the deck, we could not carry it in our pocket." I only mention this, because my learned friend, the solicitor-general has said, that he is a witness of great credit. Again, when asked, "How did you travel from Naples to Milan?" he answers, "In a carriage; I could not go on foot." I only do this to remind your lordships of the manner of the witness, which I should not do, if he had not been said to be a witness of the most perfectly correct demeanor on the present occasion. — But I [157] proceed to the substance of his evidence — I will venture to say, that a better paid witness — a better paid Italian — for any work or labour, has never yet come to our knowledge. He is paid at the rate of £2,000 sterling a year — he was the mate in that voyage of a trading vessel in the Mediterranean — he is now the fourth part owner of a vessel, upon his own account. So that to give him a sum in proportion to what he makes when at home — to make it a compensation instead of a reward — that, vessel must earn L.8,000 a year; which is somewhat above an income of from sixteen to eighteen thousand pounds in this country. There is not a ship-owner in all Messina, that makes half the money by all the ships he has of his own proper goods and chattels. In that country, a man of two or three or four hundred pounds a year is a rich man. Fifteen hundred pounds a year is a property possessed by none, except the great noblesse. Clear profits of L 8000 a year there — their names would resound over all Italy as the rich of the earth; and not a man of consequence would have gone from this country to that, who would not have tried to procure letters of recommendation to them. The Cobbler has lived in history, but in his time he was not so well known, as these two paltry shippers would be, if, instead of dealing out the instrument he did, these men kept their palaces and spent their four thousand a year. And this is his story; and if he does not mean so much as this, so much the better in another way.

My lords; the Captain of the vessel, as might be expected, is paid in a much higher way than the mate. He is paid £2,400 a year: he is fed, lodged,
and maintained; every expense is paid, and this put into his pocket, and not for the loss of and profits. I have hitherto been considering it as a compensation for the loss of his profits. But his ship is not here; to use the mate's own mode of speech, he did not bring it here in his pocket; though the owner comes to England, the ship is employed in the Mediterranean; and he is paid this — though he attempts to deny it — he is paid this as a recompense and not as a compensation. My lords, the same arguments apply to the Captain, in a greater degree, and I shall not go through them. But, it appears there was a cause of quarrel between the captain and the princess of Wales. [158] He tells you, with some naiveté, that what he had for himself, his mate, and the other twenty men of his crew, and for all his trouble, was a sum considerably less, about a fourth part less, than he receives now, for coming over to swear in this business against his antient freighter. But your lordships recollect what he added to that. He says, "When we take on board royal personages, we trust more to the uncertain than to the certain profits." This is a great truth, well known to many present, that something certain is often stipulated for, but that something more is often given by way of honorary and voluntary compensation. Then, my lords, I only stop here for one moment, to remind your lordships, that according to this, his expectation is not limited to what he gets, namely, £2,400 a year, for coming here to swear against the Queen — but he says, he has been employed by a royal person; and he tells your lordships, that the ascertained compensation bore no proportion to the voluntary reward which he expected from her majesty — how much less, then, has he a right to limit the bounty of her illustrious husband, or of the servants of his majesty, who had brought him here — if he serves them faithfully — if the case in his hands comes right through, and no accident happens If he should succeed in all this, he would then get what would make a mere joke of the £2,400 a year; though that would be infinitely greater than any shipper ever earned by the employment of his vessel in the Mediterranean Seas.

But, my lords, independent of the hope of reward, there is another inducement operating on the mind of this witness from another quarter. Is there no spite to gratify? The whole of his testimony, my lords, is bottomed on revenge. I have a right to say this, because he has told me so himself. He has distinctly sworn, that he had a quarrel with Bergami, the Queen's chamberlain, whose business it was to pay him the money; and that he complained to his own ambassador, that Bergami had kept back from him £1,300 which he claimed. What happened then? "I have made some application, some demand. When I came here last year, I gave a memorial to my ambassador, count de Ludolph, and I stated, that as I believed myself to have served the British government, because I had had the honour of bearing the English flag, I expected the present which I had [159] not received; and on account of this memorial which I gave to count de Ludolph, the English government have known me to be Vincenzo Gargiulo of Naples." Now, I mention it as a circumstance which may strike different minds in different ways, but as not immaterial in any view of this case, that the only knowledge the prosecutor of this case has of this witness is, that he made a complaint against the Queen and her chamberlain, for not having paid him £1,300 that he said, they owed him; and he adds, that he was advised to go to London to see after that sum of money. I warrant you, my lords, he does not think he is less likely to see his way clearly in the pursuit of his claim, in consequence of the evidence which he has given at your lordships bar.

My lords; there are other matters in the evidence of these two men which deserve the attention of your lordships. I think, my lords, that a princess of Wales, on board a vessel, sitting upon a gun, with her arms intertwined with those of her menial servant, and sometimes kissing that servant, is a circumstance not of such ordinary occurrance in the Mediterranean, as to make it likely, that the captain or mate would forget the most important particulars of it. Yet they do forget, or at least they differ — for I will not allow they forget — they differ most materially in their history of this matter. The mate says, that the Queen and Bergami were sitting on a gun, and that they were supporting each other. In the same page, he says afterwards, they were sitting near the main-mast, the princess sitting on Bergami's lap. Now, the difference between sitting on a gun and near the main mast may strike your lordships as not important. I state it, because the mate considers it of importance — therefore, I conceive he has some motives for it; he means to say, I place my accuracy on these details, which I give at my peril. Accordingly he says, that when he saw the Queen on Bergami's knees, it was not on a gun, but on a bench near the mainmast; and not one word about kissing do I see in the mate's evidence. He forgets the most important part of the whole. For which reason, your lordships will conclude with me, I think, that he does not confirm the captain. The [160] captain swears differently. He says, "I have seen Bergami sitting on a gun, and the princess sitting on his knees, and that they were kissing." But do they speak of the same thing? Yes, if they are to be believed at all; for the captain says immediately after, that the mate saw it as well as himself. The mate, however, never says he saw it; and my learned friends did not dare to ask him if he had ever seen it. The captain says, they saw it together; yet when the men are brought to give their evidence — and they are brought immediately one after the other — you see the consequence. They totally differ in their account of the story, and differ in a way clearly to show, that that story cannot be true. Now, what think you, my lords, of this man's desiring you to believe — of his expecting you to believe — that he was a man of that strictness of conduct, and his mate so pure a youth, educated in that primitive, ante-diluvian Garden of Eden, Naples, and Messina; — that, when he saw a lady go near a man, not touching, observe, but leaning over the place where he was reclined — nothing indecorous, nothing improper, nothing even light — but only leaning towards the place where he was reclining — he immediately desired his mate to go away, because, besides being his mate, and therefore under his especial care in point of morals, by the relation of master and mate — he was also his distant relation, and therefore, by the ties of blood also, he had upon his conscience a responsibility for the purity of the sights which should pass before that mate's eyes, and therefore he could not allow him to remain for a moment near that part of the ship, where these two were, because they appeared to be approaching towards each other. Perhaps there may be those who believe all this — who think it a likely account of the matter. Observe, my lords, he never says, that the Queen ordered them to go away — that any order to that effect came from Bergami. No. The guilty pair never interfered — they were anxious that all the crew should see them — but the virtuous Gargiulo, reviving in the modern Mediterranean a system of morals far more pure than ever antient Ocean saw, would not suffer his mate to see that which might happen, when two persons, male and female, did not touch, but were only near each other My [161] lords; there may be those who believe all this — I cannot answer for men's belief — but this I am sure, that if they do not believe it, they must believe another thing; namely, that Gargiulo the captain, and the mate Paturzo speak that which is not true. There is no way out of this conclusion. Either you must believe that the captain speaks the truth, when he gives this account of his motives, or you must believe that it is false, and that; it is gratuitously false. But not gratuitous, as it respects his own character. He means to set himself up by it; to earn his money the better, and, if possible, to take in some credulous minds by it. Perhaps he may have succeeded — the event will show — in making greater that uncertain gain, the rate of which a man, when dealing with royalty, always increases, and in improving his chance of attaining the £1,300 for which he has come over to this country.

My lords; one more statement of these men, and I have done with them. See, my lords, how well drilled they are I hold them up as models for those who may practise that art. I hold them up as highly finished specimens of it in its perfection. And no wonder. They are well drilled — they are the best paid — and therefore they ought to be the crack specimens of that art. Much money had been laid out upon them, and their zeal has been in proportion to the much they have received, and the more they expect. See, my lords, how well they have been trained But, happily, there are limits to this art, as there are to all human inventions. If there were not, God pity those who are attacked — God pity the innocent against whom this mighty art may be directed They cannot perfectly get over the disadvantage of not having access to hear the evidence of each other; but see, when art can do it, how well it is done. The master and the mate are evidently descendants, lineal descendants, of the doctors of Bologna. Whether their names are the same or similar, like those of Harry the 8th's agent, I know not. I have not before me the hundred and ten names; but that they are their lineal descendants, no man can doubt. They are afraid to have it thought, for an instant, that they ever spoke to one another upon the subject of their evidence. Intimate in all other respects — living together in the Magazine of Evidence in this [162] neighbourhood — sleeping in the same room, supping together, breakfasting together the very morning before they came here, again together the day after the first had been examined, and when the second was to come — the only subject on which they never calked, in all the intimacy of master and mate and blood and connexion, and entertaining an affection for each other that would do honour to the nearest connexion, and which I wish some of the nearest connexions had — the only subject, I say, upon which they never chose to enter, is the subject of the inquiry which now occupies all other men.

My lords; this is not peculiar to these two witnesses, but the way in which they tell it is peculiar; and is not marked, on the part of the gallant captain, by the judgment and skill which usually distinguishes him. "I am not a person," says he with indignation, "to state what I am obliged to say in this room — the subject is of such a nature that it cannot be talked of. What subject? — there is nothing so frightful in this subject which you came to support, and which you have witnessed. "No, no: but it would not be decent, it would not be creditable that I should tell to others all those things which we say in this House, before these gentlemen, these lords." "Did you ever say any thing to the mate upon it?" "Oh, never, never" "Did you tell Paturzo last night, or this morning, that it would not be fit for you and Paturzo to talk about his examination of Yesterday?" "Yes, upon this matter."

My lords; this brings me to say a word or two relative to a circumstance in the character of all these recruits of the Cotton Garden Dépôt. I must say, I think, that whatever injury this inquiry may do to the highest and most illustrious persons — however pregnant it be with every thing offensive to morals and to good taste — whatever mischiefs to the conduct of social life may arise, for some time to come, in consequence of the disgusting details brought forth in the course of this ill-omened proceeding, it must be matter of comfort, that there is one spot on the face of the island, one little land of Goshen, sacred from the squabbles which surround it, and that in this retired and pure society, those subjects which offend the delicate, which alarm the apprehensions of morality, and which go so well nigh to [163] contaminate the morals of all classes of the community elsewhere, never, by any mischance, reach; and, strange to tell, my lords, that one little spot is neither more nor less than Cotton Garden, in the vicinity of this House! Let no man, then, suppose, that the danger is so great as it has been represented; or that there is any accuracy in the statement, or that there is any ground for the alarm founded upon it, that the whole island is flooded with the indecencies and impurities which issued forth from the Green Bag; for there is at least Cotton Garden, where the most strictly modest matron may go, without feeling, that if she carries thither the most chaste virgin, that virgin's face will ever there be suffused with a blush; for in that place, and amongst the witnesses themselves — amongst the agents of this plot — amongst the contrivers of it there — amongst those who appear before your lordships to give utterance to the abominations of their own fancy — amongst them, it turns out, that there is never one whisper heard on any thing even remotely connected with the subject which so much vitiates the mind and debases, I will say, the reputation of this country every where else! My lords, if your lordships chose to believe this, far be it from me to interrupt an illusion so pleasing, even by calling it such; for it is delightful to have any such spot for the mind to repose upon. If your lordships can believe it, do so in God's name! But if you do not believe it, I say, as I said before, you must believe something else — if you do not believe it, you must believe, that all the witnesses who have said so, and they are all those who are in that dépôt, are perjured again and again.

My lords; the course of my observations has now brought me to personages of still greater importance in this case, than either the captain or the mate, although my learned friend, the solicitor-general, has stated them to be witnesses of infinite importance — I mean Demont and Sacchi; whom I trust I shall be excused for coupling together, united, as they appear to be, between themselves by the closest ties of friendship, resembling each other, as they do, in all the material particulars of their history, as connected at least with the present story; both living under the roof of the Queen and enjoying her bounty and protection; both reluctantly dismissed; both soliciting to be taken back into place and favour — connected [164] together since, by the same ties, living together in great intimacy, both in the native mountains of Switzerland, and afterwards upon their arrival in this country; remaining in this country about the same period of time, and that above twelve months; employing themselves during those twelve months in the way best adapted to fit them for the business in which they were to be employed, by obtaining access to our best classic writers, and attaining a knowledge of our language, though they modestly brag not of their proficiency in this respect, but choose to avail themselves of the assistance of an interpreter, which has this advantage, that it gives them the opportunity of preparing an answer to the question which they understand, while the interpreter is furnishing them with a needless translation.

My lords; the other points of resemblance are so many, that I shall not detail them; for your lordships will see them when I come to enter into the particulars of their evidence. But I wish, in the first place, to remind your lordships what sort of a person Mademoiselle Demont describes herself to be; because it signifies very little what we shall be able to show her to be. I had rather take her own account of herself. I cannot wish for more; and I am sure she could give us no less, with any ordinary regard to her own safety; for as to desire of truth, I say nothing upon this occasion. She is a person of a romantic disposition, naturally implanted in her mind, and which has been much improved by her intercourse with the world. She is an enemy to marriage, as she says in her letters. She does not like mankind in the abstract — "potius arnica omnibus quamlibet inimica" I think we may say, from some things which came out afterwards — mankind in the abstract she rather objects to; but she makes an exception in favour of such a near friend as Sacchi, whom she dignifies by the title of an Italian gentleman; though he, ungrateful man, to justify her dislike of mankind, will not return the compliment, by acknowledging her to be a countess! But this Italian gentleman, whom she will not acknowledge to be a servant, came over with her. Marriage, she says, she does not like. She loves sweet liberty; and in the pursuit of this "mountain nymph" over her native hills and in this country, your lordships see the sort of company in which it lands her; namely, that of Mr. [165] Sacchi, not to mention Krouse the messenger, who goes over to fetch her, and brings the reluctant fair to appear as a witness upon the present occasion.

But far be it from me, my lords, to deny the accomplishments of this person. By no means. She is the most perfect specimen — she is the most finished model — of the complete waiting-maid, that I believe the world has ever seen actually existing. I believe none of the writers of her own country, or of ours, that she is now studying, will give a more complete specimen — neither Moliere, nor Le Sage, nor our own Congreve or Cibber — than that which she has given, without any assistance, in this House. I cannot deny her the greatest readiness — that she is at no loss in writing I cannot deny — that she is not at all sterile in her descriptions upon those subjects on which she enters, until she is brought into contrast with her own letters, and until my learned friend Mr. Williams begins his cross-examination. I cannot deny that she possesses a caution which would do honour to a Machiavel of a waiting-maid; that she is gifted with great circumspection; that she possesses infinite readiness at devising excuses and adjusting one part of her evidence with another; that they were well formed and well devised, and that if the thing could have been done — which it cannot by the eternal laws of truth — she would have succeeded in blinding and deluding her hearers. She showed great art in endeavouring to reconcile the stories she had told, with the contents of the letters which were produced; which letters she had not forgotten, though she did not know that they were still in existence and ready to be produced against her. Had she been aware of their preservation, and had her patrons been aware of their contents, your lordships would never have seen her face here; as you have not seen the faces of seventy other witnesses, whom they dare not call, and whom they have shipped off, like so much meat, or live lumber, for their native country. Far be it from me, my lords, to deny the accomplishments of this person! Nor do I deny that she is a great adept at intrigue; which, indeed, she piques herself upon. She would never forgive me if I denied her that merit. Her constant practice is, to deal in double entendres: Sacchi does the same. She in her letters to her sister; and he in his conversation with Mr. Marrietti. So that it is impossible to know [166] what they mean. In short, to them may be applied what was said of old of a whole people — "tribuo illis literas de multarum artium disciplinam, non adimo scrmonis leporem, ingeniorum acumen, dicendi capiam; denique eliam, si qua sibi alia sumunt non repuguo; testimoniroum religionem et fidem nunquam ista natio coluit; totiusque hujusce rei quœsit vis, quœauctoritas, quod pondus ignorant." I hear her candour praised by some persons — and why? Because she admits she was turned off for a story which proved to be false. I hear her praised too for her other admissions; and what were those? When she was asked, if she was sincere in such and such praises which she bestowed upon her majesty, she said, in some of them she was, but not in all — in a part she was, but not in the whole. "Were you in want of money?" "Never." — "Did you never write to your sister 'I am in want of money?'" "It may be so; but if I did so, it was not true." — So there is no connexion in rerum naturâ, in this person's case, between the thing being true and her saying it, nor any opposition in this person's mind, in a thing being downright falsehood, and her saying and writing it. Truly, this is her own account of herself; and yet, to my no small astonishment, I have heard her praised for the candour with which she gave this account, by persons of moderate capacity.

My lords; I need hardly remind your lordships — I need hardly remind any person whose capacity is above the meanest — I need hardly tell any man who is not fit to be turned out in the fields among those animals whom he sometimes abuses by using — I need hardly say to any one, See what is the effect of this! Will it be said — be it — that she uses double entendres, that she tells falsehoods freely to gain her own ends; yet, that the candour of making these admissions, the ingenuousness of youth with which she tells you that she tells falsehoods by wholesale, so that she cannot be depended upon for a word that she utters, is a blandishment more seductive than all her personal charms, that it binds us to her, though not her personal lovers, and that we open our ears to all her tales because she is so engaging a liar, and acknowledges, with so much readiness, that there is not a word of truth in her late story? My lords, in any body but a witness you maybe pleased with such candour — in any one except one whose whole credit depends upon the [167] truth of her story. You may say, "Poor, dear, innocent Swiss Shepherdess, how ingenuous thy mind!" but as to a witness, I never before heard so strange a reason for giving credit, as to cite the candour with which she admitted that she was not to be believed.

My lords; look at her letters — look at her explanations of them. I will not go through them in detail; but I will tell you — and the more you look at them the more you will be convinced of this truth, that her explanations of them are impossible — that the double entendres do not fit — that the explanations she gives do not tally with what appears in black and white. Her gloss does not suit her text: they are totally inconsistent; and the clear contents of the four corners of the document show that what she stated is untrue. The letters want nothing to make them perfectly intelligible. Her key does not fit her cipher. The matter only becomes doubtful as she envelopes it in falsehood, by the inventions of the moment, by her extempore endeavours to get rid of the indisputable meaning of her own hand-writing. My lords, a plain man knows how to deal with these things. He does not entangle himself in the miserable webs which this dirty working creature attempts to throw around him: he goes straight on, if he be a wise and an honest man, to see justice done to the object of a perjured conspiracy: he goes straight through, and believes those, and those only, who show themselves to be worthy of credit; and I pray to God, that your lordships may so believe, and not stand an exception, a solitary exception, to the conviction of all the rest of mankind! I hope your lordships will believe this woman to have been sincere, when she says that the Queen was good and innocent — that at that time she spoke the language of her heart in the eloquence of her feelings, and only has since been corrupted, when having been refused to be taken back into that service where she had never received aught but favour and kindness, she fell into the hands of the other conspirators against the honour of her illustrious mistress.

I forgot, my lords, in admitting the qualities of this female, to make another concession. She is kindly attached to her own sister. She loves her with a sincere affection. She tells you so. Her principle in her conduct upon this occasion, if she is believed, was anxiety for her [168] service and interest. Now, I do not believe the story which follows: and it is not I who am calumniating Demont, because I am taking her own account of herself, which I do not believe. Mine is a plain story. She represents herself as affectionate towards that sister, heartily attached to her interest, only anxious to promote it — her sister just coming into the world at the innocent age of fifteen — and that she does all she can to obtain a place for that sister in a house which, if you believe a tittle of what she told you, ought to have the name, not of a palace, as the Attorney General says, but of a brothel. She has two sisters, indeed; she is equally attached to both; she describes the letter as written immediately after leaving those scenes, immediately after having been unwillingly turned out of this brothel — unwilling to leave it, she says, she was, although she admits that (differing from her sisters in that respect), she was rich and they were poor. She was under no necessity of submitting to that contamination, to which no necessity ought to induce an honest woman to bend. But though she was under no necessity, the honest Swiss chamber-maid balances the profits of her place against its disgrace; acting upon the principle of the Roman emperor, who, so that he raised a tax, was not over anxious as to the materials from which the filthy imposition was obtained. Though she admits that the house is worse than an ordinary brothel, and loves her sisters, the elder as well as the younger, she is occupied for six months after she leaves it; first, in endeavouring, as I told jour lordships, to obtain for the virgin of fifteen a place, to initiate her there; and next, to keep the maturer girl of seventeen in possession of so comfortable and so creditable a situation. Such is Demont by her own account! I do not believe her so bad — I believe no woman so bad, as she now finds it necessary to tell you she is, because, unexpectedly, we bring out her own hand-writing against her. I believe every word of her letter to be sincere. I believe she did right and well in wishing to retain her own place, to keep one sister there, and to obtain employment for another; but I also believe, that having been driven thence, and disappointed in her hopes of being taken back, she invented the story she has now told, not knowing that these letters were in existence, and would be brought in evidence against [169] her. But she was sworn in Lincoln's-Inn Fields, before she knew of these letters being in existence. Had she known of this fact; I have no doubt she would rather have forgone all the advantages she has reaped, for coming forward as a leading witness in the plot against the Queen, than have made her appearance at your lordships bar.

So much for this lady. I now come to that amiable gentleman M. Sacchi. And I observe, my lords, with great satisfaction, a most pleasing symptom of liberality in the present times, as exhibited in the liberal reception which this witness has met with among your lordships, and in the pains which have been taken, both by those who produced him, and those who afterwards examined him, to increase the estimation in which it was wished that he should be held. It shows, my lords, how the age is improving. It shows how vulgar prejudices against Buonaparté and the French wearing away. I well remember the time when nobody would have been very well pleased to bring forward, as a principal witness in a case of any kind, a man whose recommendation was, that he had been a soldier of Buonaparté, that he had served in any of his campaigns, and had been promoted by that Corsican adventurer — that usurper — that revolutionary chief — as it was the fashion to call him. Nevertheless, now that a witness against the Queen has this merit to boast of, it is brought forward, as if we had never heard any thing — as if we had never been sickened by whole volumes of abuse which had been poured forth, for the purpose of showing, that the very name of a French hussar, particularly if be happened to be a servant of Buonaparté, was just the name for every thing most profligate and abandoned. Now, my lords, without having ever been one of those who approved of the excess to which this abuse was carried on the part of ourselves and of our neighbours, I nevertheless cannot help thinking, that a cast-off servant, a courier who pretends to be a gentleman and now has his servant to wait upon him, and who says "Thank God, I was always in easy circumstances," though he was once living on the wages of a common courier — who can only say, that he was a common soldier in the French army, and was refused a commission in the Swiss army but was offered the place of a Serjeant — would, a few years ago, have stood very little chance of [170] mending his credit by this last adjunct. But, my lords, this is my least objection to Sacchi. I must be allowed to say, that the fact, that such men may have bravery enough to induce their masters to give them a pair of colours, is not the best positive proof of their being the most sincere and the most scrupulous of mankind. But look, my lords, at the account you have of him from himself. He too deals in double entendres. He has gone by three whole names and a diminutive; two of them we know, and the third we do not know; but by three names and a half has he gone. When he came to this country he began his double entendres as soon as he came in contact with his beloved Demont. He told two double entendres — if I may use four syllables instead of the short Saxon word. For if men will do this frequently and continually — if they will do it for a great object, they nation are get into the habit of doing it for no object, but mere sport and playfulness. He tells first this double entendre — "that he had come in the service of a Spanish family." Then he tells another — that "he had a law-suit." We have never heard what that was, nor any thing more about it — that he came over in consequence of "a law-suit, a process with her royal highness." How, then, did he get into the situation in which he is now living with his own servant, seeing that he was so sorry at being turned away from the service of the Queen, where he was first employed at the lowest wages of a courier, and afterwards as a poor equerry? My lords, you must believe that he has got money nobody knows whence; or you must disbelieve the story altogether.

But, my lords, there is another similarity between Sacchi and Demont. He is asked, "How much money had you in your name at your banker's at Lausanne?" He answers — "Fifty Louis." "Will you swear you had not more than that at one time at that banker's?" — "I had no more than those fifty Louis." "Will you swear you never had a credit which empowered you to draw upon that banker for a larger sum than this?" — "I never had." "Have you never represented that you had a larger sum or a greater credit?" — "I do not remember to have said." Suppose any of your lordships were asked to speak to a fact, and you say — "positively not," — "most certainly not," — "I know it is not so," — [171] nobody would dare to put the next question to you — at least I know very few of your lordships to whom they would dare to put it — "did you ever say so?" It could only be put to any one of your lordships in joke, or in consequence of the greatest familiarity subsisting between the parties. For you had answered that question before. If you are a man to be believed upon your oath, have you not answered the question, whether you ever told any person you had more at your banker's, by saying you know you had no more at our banker's? If you had no more at your banker's, you never could have said so; for if you had, you would have been guilty of a double entendre. But not so with Sacchi, or whatever his names, great or small, may be — "I may have done so — I cannot swear when I am in doubt." The same as to his letters. He was asked, "Did you ever represent to any person, after you had left the service of her royal highness, that you were in a destitute condition?" — "Never." "Did you ever intreat any person of her royal highness's household to have compassion on your dreadful situation, after you had left her royal highness?" — "I have never been in a dreadful situation." "Did you ever represent" — there I was stopped — "Did you ever say" — but he had heard all the argument about representing — "Did you ever say to any person that your conduct towards her royal highness was liable to the charge of ingratitude with respect to a generous benefactor?" — "Never" "Will you swear that you never intreated any one of the suite of her royal highness, after you had left her service, to take compassion on your situation?" — "It may be." "Is that your handwriting? — a letter being put into his hands — "It is." "Is that your hand-writing?" — another letter being put into his hands — "It is." Now, in these letters he has taxed himself with ingratitude in the plainest words. Luckily, he had forgotten those letters. Would any of your lordships shelter yourselves under such a despicable pretext as to say, "Oh! I did not say it?" I wrote it?" Litera scripta — Your lordships shall see the Letters.

But your lordships will recollect what passed afterwards; for I now come to a [172] providential accident — if I may use such contradictory terms, in compliance with the common understanding of them; I now come to an accident, but which I call a providence in favour of innocence — which is always the care of Providence. Sacchi was asked by my learned friend the attorney-general, "You have stated, that when you came to this country, you assumed the name of Milani, what was the reason why you assumed that name?" To which he answered, "I took this name on account of the tumult (tumulto) which had taken place, and of the danger I should have run if I had come under my name, knowing that I should have been known." — "When was it that you assumed the name by which you now go?" It was immediately after the affair that happened at Dover." Now, luckily, he had forgotten the date; happily, he did not recollect, that he came over to this country in July in the year 1819, and that the tumult at Dover happened in July 1820. These, my lords, are those providential circumstances by which conspiracies are detected; and but for which, every one of your lordships may be their victims to-morrow. Now, I call upon your lordships to see how the witness gets out of this. After a short interval in the examination, your lordships will find in page 459 of the printed Minutes, that which I will read for the sake of connection; and I do it the more freely, because it is the last quotation with which I shall trouble your lordships from this evidence. In answer to a question put to him by the attorney-general, Sacchi says, "I took this name on account of the tumult which had taken place, and of the danger which I should have run if I had come under my own name, knowing that I should have been known." "When did you assume the name by which you now go? "Then he instantly recollects, "It was immediately after the affair that happened at Dover." The name he now goes by, he assumed since the affair at Dover; the name of Milani he assumed a year before at Paris. My learned friend, the attorney-general, leaves him there — reasoning, from his knowledge of these matters, that he would only make had worse. But one of your lordships took it up; and if there ever was a specimen of shifting and beating about the bush, to shelter a mortal from an unlucky scrape [173] arising out of a false tale, here you have it. The manner in which it was said — the confusion — the embarrassment — the perplexity — I cannot represent. I trust your lordships remember it. But enough remains upon the record, and by that I should be willing to rest the credit of Sacchi as a witness. "Had you ever gone by the name of Milani before you came to England?" "I took this name in Paris." — "At what time, in what year, did you take that name in Paris?" "Four or five days before I set out for England." — "When was that?" "In the month of July last year." — "What was your motive for taking that name at that time in Paris?" "As I knew that I was known in London by my own name, I endeavoured to shelter myself against any inconvenience that might happen to me." Not a word about what had happened to others! "What tumult had happened at that time that induced you to take that name?" — there is no more getting him out of the potential mood into the past tense, than there is of getting him out of knavery into honesty — "What tumult had happened at that time that induced you to take that name?" "I was warned that the witnesses against the Queen might run some risk if they were known" — forgetting, or wishing to slur over, that he had used the word "had," and wishing to substitute in its stead, another tense — "Had you been informed that they had actually run any risk?" "They had not run any risk then." Then what was the "tumult" which he had spoken of before? The most favourable opportunity is then given him which an honest witness could possibly desire, of correcting himself and of explaining the whole fact — an opportunity which counsel might not have been disposed to allow, but which the House very properly gave him. The former questions and answers are read over to the witness, and he is desired to reconcile and explain them. But, with all those advantages, observe, my lords, the lameness of the pace with which he hobbles off; for on the manner of doing a thing much depends. The former question and answer being read from the Minutes, he is asked this question, "Having stated in a former answer, that you changed your name to that of Milani in consequence of a tumult that had happened, what did you mean by that statement?" "Whilst I was at Paris a gentleman came, accompanied by the [174] courier Krouse," who had been named before, "and the only time I saw him; and he," not Krouse, who might have been called, but the gentleman, who is not named — "he told me, that it would be necessary to change my name" — a kind man, though unknown; more kind than many we know better — "because it would be dangerous to come to England under my own name, as I had told him" — and these are inventions after the first part of the sentence — "had told him I was known in England under my own name; and that already something had happened on this account; not on my account, but on account of other people." — "Did he tell you that a tumult had taken place?" — now he is obliged to say something about a tumult, being led to it by the reading of the question — "He told me some tumult, some disorder." — "On what occasion did he say that tumult had token place?" "He told me nothing else." — "You are understood to say it was with respect to other persons; what did you mean by other persons? "He meant to say that some disorder had already happened, in regard to other persons, for similar causes." — "What do you mean by similar causes?" Now, I never saw a witness who was brought into a corner by such a question, who did not answer as this man has done — "I have repeated what that gentleman told me." — "Did you understand that it was with respect to witnesses who had come to give evidence in respect to the Queen?" "I believed it was for this object." — "Did you know that any witnesses had at that time come over to give evidence in the cause of the Queen?" "I did not know with certainty; but in the same way I was coming I might imagine" — the potential mood again — "that some other people might have already come." And there I leave him. I do not deny that his might imagine this or any thing else. I do not deny that other persons might have come as he was coming. I admit it to be possible. But what I deny is, that any person could have told him that which he says they told him. That he may have invented that here, when he was pressed from an unexpected quarter, I admit to be possible; but that an unknown gentleman should have accompanied the well-known Krouse to Paris, should have told him a pure fiction of the brain, that no man could have [175] dreamt of a year ago, is as utterly impossible, as that a man should, by chance, have written the Iliad. My lords, only see how this stands; for I am afraid you do not feel it with the force it ought to be felt. We now all talk of the tumult at Dover, and the risk to which the witnesses are exposed, with familiarity, because they are matters of notoriety. But carry yourselves back to July 1819. Who of us all, even in his most fanciful mood, ever dreamt of any one part of that scene which has taken place, which we know, or of those consequences which we shall unfortunately never live not to know, have followed from these proceedings — a tumult in consequence of the arrival of flocks of witnesses coming, and those regularly insulted, because witnesses in the Queen's cause? All this is mighty familiar to us now. But go back, my lords, I say, to July 1819. Would any man then have suspected it? I say, my lords, it was an invention by the witness, to cover his retreat from the position into which he had been unwarily entrapped; and that in the month of July 1819, no man ever told him, that any tumult had taken place, or that any witnesses had been exposed to insult.

My lords; it is only by comparisons like these that perjury can be detected and conspiracies defeated. And this leads me to remark, that if you defeat a conspiracy by showing perjury, or untrue swearing and prevarication on points however collateral or trifling they may be, there is an end of the credit due to the witness and the proof of the conspiracy on the main points, though you should have left them untouched — which is not the case here. But, my lords, with respect to the witness Sacchi, I may as well now mention that part of the story which he and Restelli, a turned-off courier like himself, had agreed in trumping up: because, however disgusting, however offensive, the slightest allusion to it or the recollection of it, may be, I am sure your lordships will see I cannot avoid allusion to it, and a comment upon it. Do your lordships think it very likely, that any woman — I might almost say any miserable person who gained her livelihood by prostitution — would do that thing openly, in the face of day, with a menial servant four yards from her, without the slightest covering or screen, which Restelli tells you the Queen did openly, in the neighbourhood of the Villa d'Este? Do you [176] believe that with the knowledge that a courier was travelling on one side of the carriage, with the certainty that if surprised asleep, that courier might open the curtain (for that is his story, that he always did it) — do you believe that, with the ruin to which such a discovery would expose her, by blasting her character even amongst the most abandoned of her sex, that any living person would go to sleep in the position described by Sacchi as that in which the Queen and her chamberlain were found by him in the morning in the carriage? But your lordships credulity must be stretched yet many degrees; for if you should have expanded it so as to take in the belief, that such a thing happened once, it will be nothing compared with what Sacchi has occasion for: for you must stretch it yet many degrees wider, in order to believe his story; and if you do not believe the whole, you must believe no part of it. This, he said, was the habitual, constant practice: it happened again and again; and he himself saw the self same thing several times. I appeal to your lordships — Is this probable? Is it in the common course of things, even with the most profligate and abandoned women, who are a disgrace to their sex? I say, my lords, unless you believe the parties to be absolutely insane, there is no accounting for such conduct.

My lords; there is an impossibility, I think, physically, in the story which Sacchi tells, at a time when the carriage was going at the rate of nine or ten miles an hour, over such roads as we know are found in that part of Italy, with two hands placed across each other, while the parties are fast asleep, without any power over their limbs. To overcome this difficulty would I think have required the evidence of philosophers, who had made experiments. And yet, my lords, we are called upon to believe this on the evidence of Sacchi, such as he has described himself to be; but who has given you no other description of the carriage, except that there were curtains to it. What if it be an English carriage, with glass and spring blinds! What if I show your lordships, by evidence, that it was an English carriage with glass and with spring blinds! And even if that glass were down, which is not very likely in the night, how was he to open the curtain without putting his hand in to touch the spring; which he does not say that he did? What if I [177] should prove, my lords, that Sacchi was not the courier who went that journey, but that it was another courier, of whom you shall hear more. But I do not say that it is necessary for me to prove this. I deny that I am called upon to prove this. The opposite side had plenty of witnesses to establish their case, if established it could have been. They had abundance of cast-off servants; and if cast-off servants would not answer their purpose, they had the servants now in the employment of her majesty. Now, why did they not call them? Again and again let me entreat of your lordships never to lose sight of this fact — for it is a cardinal, if not the cardinal point in this case — the accuser is not excused from making out his case. He has no right to put it upon the accused to call witnesses to prove herself innocent; seeing that it is the business of the accuser, by good evidence, whencesoever it may be drawn, to prove the guilt.

But, my lords, was there any other person in the carriage while this scene was going on? "Non mi ricordo" was the answer of Sacchi, adopting the language of the celebrated Majoochi. Now observe, my lords, the caution of this answer. That question did not come upon him by surprise. "I shall be asked," thought he, "whether there was any body else in the carriage. If I say there was any body there, nobody will believe it to have happened. If I say nobody was there, and it turns out that somebody was there, that will destroy my testimony, and therefore I must say, I do not remember." But he shall not stay there. I will drag him out. The first remark naturally would be — "this could not have taken place when any person was by — there must have been nobody else there." My lords, there was somebody else there, as I will prove to your lordships, during the whole of the journey. In the next place, my lords, after a person has witnessed such a scene as this — and that person a servant — is it very likely that, from that moment forward, his lips should be hermetically sealed? that he should never dream of confiding it to the easy ear, the willing ear, of his tender and gentle and soft friend Demont? that he should enjoy the intimate and delightful intercourse of her society, for months, both abroad and in this country, without talking of this, from a delicacy, I have no doubt, in their intercourse, far above [178] that of all other pairs? He was aware that some had split from saying that they had never told it to any one until they told it at Milan. — Boatmen, masons, carvers, gilders, waiters, all the witnesses brought from Lombardy. But he, my lords, did not choose to say so. He had, by your lordships kind permission, seen the evidence taken at your lordships' bar, and had studied it, knowing, as he does, English. He did not choose to say, "I had told it to no one," but "I had told it to people, though I cannot name one of them now." I say, my lords, if it is clear, that such a thing could not pass and be seen without the eye-witness telling it again, it is just equally clear, that the eye-witness could not tell it again, without well recollecting to whom he had so told it.

My lords; as to the witness Kress and her story at Carlsruhe, I have only to add, that it is physically impossible it could have happened, inasmuch as she says she well remembers it was after the first night they arrived at the inn. She remembers that by the circumstance of her having been called in one morning at breakfast — —

Earl Grey . — I would beg to ask whether the learned counsel is near concluding. If not, perhaps it might be desirable to adjourn now, the hour at which it was arranged the House should adjourn having arrived.

The Earl of Liverpool. — It would certainly be desirable that we should keep, as nearly as is practicable to the time which was arranged — a quarter of an hour would not be an object; but that probably would not bring us to the conclusion of the learned counsel's address.

The Lord Chancellor . — My lords, the counsel at the bar cannot possibly do justice to so important a case as this is, by binding himself to quarters of an hour, or half hours. As he is now beginning to comment on the testimony of another witness, this may be as convenient a time for stopping, as any other. I would therefore suggest that your lordships should now adjourn.

Ordered, that the further consideration and second reading of the said bill be adjourned till to-morrow morning.

4 October 1820 Mr. Brougham resumed —

How comes it to pass, my lords, that with no want of care in the preparation of this Case — that with the greatest display of skill and management in all the parts of the preparation — that with boundless resources of all sorts, to bring these faculties into play, there yet should be one deficiency so remarkable, that even upon the names of the Witnesses being pronounced, it must strike every observer — I mean, that want of balance between the different countries from which the Evidence is brought, and that unfairness towards some great states, contrasted so manifestly with the infinite attention which is paid to others; so that while the Italian States, from the greatest to the pettiest, are represented on the present occasion by numberless deputies, I will not say of all ranks, but of all ranks below the lowest of the middle orders, when you come across the Alps you find Switzerland, the whole Helvetic League, appearing in the person of a single nymph, and the whole circle of the Germanic empire embodied in the person age of one waiting-maid at an inn — that from Vienna, the capital of that country, nobody appears at all — that from none of the other resting places of her majesty, in her tour through that her native land, does a single delegate arrive, that from none of her abiding places there, least of nil from her place of nativity, where she was best known, is one deputy to be seen; and that, in fact, every thing on this side of the Alps is to be found in the person of that one chamber-maid or cellar-maid or assistant to the cellar-man or drawer — for in grave quarters doubts were raised in which of these capacities this Germanic representative was to be taken. But, whatever we might doubt as to her quality, with respect to her number there is no doubt, that she is the one, single, individual from that portion of the world, and that, save and except the Swiss maid, she is the one single individual, who is not [180] Italian. I beg your lordships pardon — there are two grand exceptions, but they are my witnesses, not my learned friends, and I reserve them to open my case withal.

My lords; I now come to call the attention of your lordships to this single German individual who appears before you, and in proceeding to deal with whom, I was kindly interrupted by the attention of your lordships to the convenience of the parties yesterday; and here, as upon former occasions, I find myself obliged to have recourse to the witness herself, for her description of her own qualifications. She knows them best; she cannot be said to be an unfavourable evidence, for except in the single instance of the Queen as shown forth against her here, there never yet was known any person, extremely anxious to fabricate evidence against herself. Now Kress, to take her from her earlier years, appears by her own account to have embraced, at the tenderest age, the reputable, the unsuspicious, the unexposed office of a chamber-maid at a little German inn. If your lordships will calculate from the number of years which she mentions back to the time to which her evidence applies, you will find she was just turned, of thirteen years when she first became such a chamber-maid at an. inn where she was afterwards. The other places in which she served it is not quite so easy to discover; but still there is no very great, difficulty, and any little impediment in the way of our research into this part of her history is removed by a little attention to what the object is of the person who alone creates that difficulty, and to the motives with which it was thrown in our way. I make Kress herself her own biographer; for she tells you she was in other places, what places? Mr. So and So. "Mr. Marwey, what was he?" — "I was as his servant." She tries to sink, until pressed, what the particular occupation of the master was, and what the particular capacity of herself in. that service; and then it comes out, that in all the instances, without one exception, in which she was in place, except when she was employed in the laundry of the palace of Baden, she was in all those cases in an inn, and in no other house. However often she may have changed her place, she never has changed her station.

My lords; she lets us a little more into her history afterwards, and into the [181] nature of her pretensions to credit before your lordships. First, we find in what manner she was induced to give her evidence; and I do intreat the attention of your lordships to it, because it shows, that if there is a want of witnesses here, particularly from Germany, it is from no lack of agency on the part of those who were preparing the Case against the Queen, for the agents in Germany are found in their accustomed number, with their usual activity, and with the command of their ordinary resources. And I must say, that reflecting upon the Milan Commission as an Englishman, and recollecting that the German agents are not our countrymen, I feel some satisfaction that there was a greater degree of impropriety shown in the conduct of the German agents than we have ever imputed to any one beyond the Alps. I introduce to your lordships fearlessly in support of this proposition, baron Grimm, the minister of Wurtemberg, the throne of which has been filled by the princess royal of England; though when I trace his connection with the parties in this prosecution — he and a person named Reden, (which Reden succeeded baron Ompteda in his mission to Rome, and is now there in that capacity, where he was one of those who dared to treat the consort of his royal master, who was his Queen as well as she is your lordships, with those insults which made it impossible for her to remain there, even if the defence of her honour had not imperiously called her hither) — Grimm and Reden, and another whose name does not occur to me, but who is also a minister of the grand duke where the scene is alleged to have taken place, were the active and the unscrupulous agents in this part of the plot against her majesty. The worthy baron, Grimm, in the zeal which he shows for his employers, I have no hesitation in saying, has scrupled not to throw away far from him all those feelings of decorum, which a man may not dismiss, even in the ordinary occasions of private life. It seems, however, my lords, that in affairs of diplomacy, that may be justifiable in a minister which would disgrace a particular individual — that that may earn him the applause of his employers which would call down upon his head the reprobation of every honest man in private life — that that may cover him with rewards, which he may falsely call honours, which would dishonour and disgrace him, had he been only acting in his private capacity. My [182] lords, I say, baron Grimm did that which would have been attended with such effects against his character, if he had not been a diplomatic agent — to whom, I presume, all things are lawful.

Baron Grimm, my lords, was living in those apartments — they were his own by occupation — he heard that the Queen was about to arrive — he artfully gave them up. He accommodated her royal highness with the use of those rooms. He kindly left the principal apartment, and disinterestedly encountered the inconvenience of a change to other and worse lodgings. He courteously gave her the use of those from which he had himself departed; and, as soon as her royal highness, on the very day that she had left them, he returns again to the same rooms, and he is found with another coadjutor in this plot, running up and down — to use Barbara Kress's expression, "running about the rooms," examining every thing, looking at the furniture, prying into the beds, taking note of what had passed, that he might report to those who he thought would have been well pleased if he had gone upon such errands, but who I know and feel were above sending him upon such a dirty mission. But, my lords, in one character he does not appear. Active as this agent every where is as a runner of the conspiracy, sedulous and unscrupulous in his observations as he has been, regardless of his own dignity and forgetful of that of the sovereign whom he represents, as he has proved himself to be, he nevertheless does not condescend to make himself a witness — he does not adventure to come forward here — he does not show the same boldness to face your lordships and us, which he showed to face the reprobation of the public in his own country, and wherever else his conduct should be criticised. Here, however, the baron is not forthcoming — here he is not to be found — yet here he was a material witness, material in proportion to the importance of the matters which Barbara Kress alone has been brought to this country to swear; to — of paramount importance, because; Kress is the only witness who is brought to swear to any one of those particulars that are said to have passed at Carlsruhe — of still greater importance, when your lordships reflect, that because, as he entered the room at the moment the Queen left it, he must have been able, if Kress spoke the truth; to give confirmation to [183] her statement. The baron is, however, absent, and the only witness that could be obtained by all the skill, the industry, and the zeal of the several agents, to speak to this extraordinary fact, is this single German chamber-maid.

Let us then pursue, my lords, the history of the only witness whom, with all the means in their possession, and so little scrupulousness in using them, these agents have been able to gather from all Germany. Look, my lords, at the contradictory account this woman gives of her motives for coming over to this country. She twice over swore that she came upon compulsion — that she only came because she was forced — and you no sooner turn the page than you find that she made a bargain for compensation for the loss of time; but she was never promised any thing, no recompence, no belohnung, only an entschadigung, it was said while she was examined: but she would not say so, she would not adopt the expression tendered her; though offered to her, she would not put it into her mouth, but she said she came by compulsion, but at the same time had bargained for recompence. But what had she reason to expect without any express bargain being made? What reason had she to expect recompence? And in what liberality had she ground to hope it would be meted out to her? She shall again tell the story which she told, however reluctantly. None of your lordships can forget with what reluctance it was wrung from her: but, happily, still it was wrung from her. Your lordships will find the part of the examination I allude to in page 193 of the printed Minutes. She was asked, whether she had ever been examined before, and she answered, she had been at Hanover. The examination then was thus, "What did you get for going to Hanover?" "I received a small payment, just for the time I had lost." "How much was that payment?" "I cannot exactly tell; it was little, very little." Now this I pledge myself to the accuracy of — "little, very little," those are her words at page 193. Why then it was said, the less it was, the more easily it may be remembered; but it subsequently turned out, that it was not because the reward was so little, but because it was so great, that she could not recollect it. "It was little, very little." Very little! What is this mere nothing? What, my [184] lords, if it was a larger sum by five or six times than her yearly wages — what, if it was a larger sum by ten times than her yearly wages — what, if this little, this mere nothing, was even greater than her yearly wages, including all the perquisites of her place! What, if added to the sum she got for another trip, to be examined at Frankfort — she having been absent from her home six days on one trip, and four or five on the other — what if, for one fortnight of a year, taking the going and returning into the account, this "very little," this mere nothing, which she cannot recollect, which she dismissed from her memory, and cannot now recall, because it was so little, turns out to be about double the sum, at all events more than half as much again, as she ever received, wages, perquisites, accidents included, in any one year, in her occupation of chambermaid! Now, my lords, will any man of plain ordinary understanding and capacity, even if he has not been accustomed to sift evidence — even if this was the first time he was ever called upon so to exercise his faculties — pretend to say that he can believe this woman, in her attempt to deny her receiving any thing — in her failure in the attempt to recollect what it was, because it was so little a sum, when it was a sum that must have made an impression upon her mind, not only to prevent forgetfulness of it, not only (if she spoke truth voluntarily and honestly) to make her have no doubt in her mind and no difficulty in telling it; but — what is equally of importance for your lordships consideration — to make that part of her evidence be pronounced false also, in which she says she expects no reward in future; when here you see, that her expectations for the future must be measured by her recollection of the liberality with which she has been treated during the past.

My lords; you will find, that the same equivocating manner pursues this witness through the details of the case. The way in which she describes herself to have left the room when she pretends to have witnessed one particular scene, in order to go to the countess of Oldi's room — her way of denying when examined, whether she went there to satisfy herself that the person she had seen, or thought she had seen, was the princess, clearly show your lordships, that she did not go to madame Oldi's room for that purpose, if she went at all; for, in answer to one of the questions put to her, as to the purpose of her [185] going to madame Oldi's room, and whether it was not to assure herself as to whom she had seen in the other, she says, "I saw it was the princess" — which had nothing to do with the question as to the purpose of her going to madame Oldi's room, if the other account she gives was true, that she had no such motive in going to madame Oldi's room, which was not an immaterial point; for it was necessary for her to negative any such reason for going to that room, as otherwise she could not prove that she had certainly seen the Queen in the other room — Non-constat that the Queen was in that room, because madame Oldi was not the only other woman in that house. It does not prove it was the Queen because madame Oldi was in that room; but still the witness having gone there with the intention of ascertaining whether madame Oldi was there, was a complete proof, that she was not satisfied that the person she had seen was the person whom it was her interest and her well-paid employment to come forward here for her employers in this conspiracy, and swear she had seen. — I have mentioned to your lordships, that in the Carlsruhe case the ambassador Grimm does not come forward, with others who might have been brought — others, belonging to the place; others belonging to the Queen's suite — to the absence of whom the observation I had the honour of making yesterday, and which I may have occasion to repeat afterwards, at present most strongly and undeniably applies.

But now, my lords, we must again cross the Alps in pursuing the history of these witnesses. And there we find, that having dismissed all the principal performers in this piece, those that remain are mere make-weights, thrown in to give colour and consistency to the fanciful picture, and to all of whom are applicable the general observations upon such testimony, which I had the honour of submitting to your lordships yesterday. Nothing, I think, can strike any one as being more inconceivable, than that what all these witnesses swear to have seen take place, should have been permitted to be seen by mortal eyes by either of the parties to whom the depositions apply. The character and nature of those witnesses of the lowest class of society, of the meanest appearance in every respect, of the humblest occupations, some of them even degrading ones, after all the pains taken to render them produceable [186] witnesses — the total failure to clothe them with any the least appearance even of ordinary respectability — all this must have struck every person forcibly who saw even but one of them here. I might remind your lordships of Guggiari, one of the boatmen employed on the Lake of Como, one of a boat of eleven, all of whom were present at the time, none of whom had any intercourse of a confidential nature with either of the parties — if we are to talk of two parties here, as the accusation compels me to do, contrary to all truth, and without any proof on their part. The impossibility of conceiving that any individuals in their ordinary senses, and possessing their common understandings, would have allowed such things to have passed before eleven men of this description, and so strange to them, must have struck every one who heard the evidence given, and have dispensed with the necessity, and almost excluded me from cross-examining a single one of this swarm of petty witnesses, who were filling up the gap between Kress and Demont. Why were none of the others called — none of the crew? Did he ever say to any person what he had seen? Had he ever from that moment to the present time whispered it? Yes, once. When — where? At Milan — to the Commission. So it is with all the rest. Restelli, who swears to a scene too disgusting to be gone over in detail — who swears to that abomination having been impudently practised in the open face of day, without the most ordinary covering or shelter, and whilst he was at four paces distance, and where the turn of his head might have revealed it to him — this Restelli, like all the rest, for it is an observation that applies to every one of these witnesses of these strange abominations — as if the relation between cause and effect in this singular case was wholly suspended — had never opened his mouth on the subject — his lips are hermetically sealed, never to be opened again, until he appears before the Commission at Milan. Ten long months elapse — the same silence! Was he living the life of a hermit all these ten months? Did he, like a solitary recluse, never see mortal face, nor approach mortal ear? Was there no brother, sister, man, woman, or child, to whom he could whisper it? To child perhaps, profligate as I have no doubt he is, he might refrain from revealing it; [187] but to brother, to mistress, to wife, he might have communicated it — to boatmen, who have been, as I know, the means of corrupting not a few of those whom they have attended, for they have confessed that they have got into the way of telling stories for which there is not a shadow of foundation, because their passengers have got into the way of paying them for amusing them with those details by way of gossip — not one whisper ever escapes the lips of Restelli, or of the rest of the witnesses, as to the sights they had seen. Is it, my lords, the effect of seeing such sights to make men silent is it the effect of seeing such sights to make men even in the higher order of society silent? How many are there of your lordships, who have not had long official habits, whose lips are not under the regulation which such experience is calculated to give, whose whole movements of mind and body are not disciplined and squared according to the rules of a court, so as even to enact the courtier when none are present — how many even of your lordships, unless perhaps persons such as I have described, would not instantly have revealed it to some friend or other? But, my lords, I profess I can name none in private society — I can hardly name any gentleman, however prudent and discreet in his conversation, who not being entrusted confidentially, who only seeing what the party showed they evidently did not mean to be concealed, who under no seal of secrecy became acquainted with the fact, who would not necessarily, on having witnessed so strange a sight, have made those wiser for talking with him whom he might afterwards chance to converse withal. Yet these low persons, so different from persons in the upper ranks of life, are so much more discreet, so infinitely more upon their guard at all times and seasons, that it is persons of discretion and purity only whose ears would be contaminated, and whose cheeks would be crimsoned by the repetition of these details; for in no one case does any of the witnesses pretend to say, that he had ever told a living being of those strange and abominable sights which he had witnessed. My lords, were they sights of every day's occurrence? Was the princess of Wales kissing her servant openly and without drawing the curtains, a thing that happened on the Lake of Como, as often as the wind blew upon it? Was the princess riding with her servant in a carriage, in an [188] attitude not to be named without a blush, an occurrence which happened every day? My lords, the sight said to have been witnessed was so strange, so unheard-of, so frightful, so monstrous, so portentous, that no person could have beheld it and kept it to himself for a single day. But, my lords, days, weeks, months, passed away, and then it was told for the first time before the Milan Commission. It was then, for the first time, that the lips of these persons were unsealed! But, my lords, I will not admit, that they concealed these extraordinary things for weeks or days or even hours. They may perchance have concealed it, from the instant that they invented it, upon hearing that their predecessors in their journey to Milan had been well paid for lesser slanders — they perchance may have kept it to themselves lest they should have covered themselves with infamy among those who knew this to be a falsehood — among their neighbours — but they kept it secret no longer than the journey to Milan demanded; and in no case, will I venture to say, was it kept longer in their breasts than from the time that it crossed their imagination to the time they went and earned the reward of their perjury.

But, my lords, you will see that in this instance we have no variety. There is, in this respect, a general sameness in the conduct of these witnesses. In other instances there are variations of importance. Do your lordships recollect Pietro Cuchi, the waiter from Trieste? Can any man who saw him have forgotten him? Does he not rise before your faces the instant I mention his name — unless many of your lordships should recollect the face, the never-to-be-forgotten expression of face, although the name may have escaped you? Do your lordships recollect that expression of physiognomy — those eyes — that nose — that lecherous mouth with which the wretch stood here to detail impurities which he has invented, to repeat the falsehood to which he had previously sworn at Milan? Do you recollect the eye of that hoary pander from Trieste? Did he not look, as the great poet of Italy describes the hoary letcher in the infernal regions to have looked, when he says that he regarded him with the eye, the gloating eye of an ancient tailor peeping through the eye of his needle? My lords, I remember that man well. The story he told is enough. But I will contradict him; for he, at least, shall not pass unpunished. [189] He, at least is here. He must be made an example of. I can contradict others: I can drag others to punishment: but he shall not escape. My lords, I will show you, by evidence undoubted, unquestionable, above all suspicion, that that man must have sworn falsely. I will prove it by the room itself. I can, if I will, prove it by the position of the door. I think his own account of the position of that door, in answer to questions put by your lordships, might almost save me the trouble of doing it. But I will show you more. I will show you, that what he swore cannot be true — either here, if your lordships put me to the necessity of it, or elsewhere, for the sake of justice: I can show, my lords, that the Queen slept at Trieste, in her whole life, but one night; that she came one day, went to the Opera, as he admitted she did (that was the only truth the witness told), left it on the morrow, and neither before or after ever crossed the threshold of the gates of Trieste in her days.

My lords; I dismiss the other witnesses of the same description. I take this filthy cargo by sample purposely. Let those who will, delve into the bulk — I will not break it more. That it is damaged enough, the sample tells sufficiently, and with a single remark I dismiss it. Recollect, my lords, those foolish stories, not only about the hand, but about the pictures, and about the bracelet chain being put round the neck, with I know not what other trumpery, got up for the purpose of variegating the thrice-told tale. And your lordships will, I think, agree with me, that the Italians who coined the fictions are pretty much the same now, that they were known to our ancestors to be, a few centuries ago. Whether Iachimo be the legitimate offspring of our great Shakespeare's mind or not may be doubted; but your lordships will readily recognize more than one of the witnesses, but one especially, as the own brother of Iachimo. How has he represented himself? — "I have belied a lady, The princess of this country, and the air on't Revengingly enfeebles me. — — Mine Italian brain Can in your duller Britain operate Most vilely; for my vantage, excellent; And, to be brief, my practice so prevailed, That I return'd with similar proof enough To make the noble Leonatus mad. My lords; the cases are the same. We have the same evidence, from the same [190] country, and for the same purpose; almost with the same effects; and by the same signs, marks, and tokens, by an extraordinary coincidence, the two cases are sought to be substantiated.

And now, my lords, permit me, having disposed generally of the characters of the Witnesses, to call the attention of your lordships — and it shall be within much narrower limits than I could have done had I not necessarily anticipated the greater part of my comments on this part of the case, in my character of the witnesses who supported it; because, while I have been dealing with the case in that way, I have been of necessity led so far to anticipate, as to comment on the different branches of the case which each witness was called upon to substantiate — permit me, I say, to call the attention of your lordships to the several Heads, as it were, of charge — the several counts — if I may so speak of this strange indictment under the form of a bill of Pains and Penalties which is brought forward against her majesty.

Your lordships will recollect, that the first of these is evidently a Neapolitan scene. There the connection is alleged to have been first completed — there the parties came together and accomplished, for the first time, but with great freedom, and with long continuance, and without any restraint at all, the purpose which they appear — I will not say long — to have cherished, but to have conceived somewhere about ten days or a fortnight before. The princess of Wales (this is the accusation), having been theretofore a person of unimpeachable character, a person of unimpeachable life; proved to have been so by much stronger evidence than if she had never been suspected; proved to have been so, if there is truth in evidence, if there is benefit in acquittal, if there is justice in the world; proved to have been so, better than if she had never been tried, by two solemn acquittals, after two searching examinations; so much proved to have been so, that when one set of ministers had reported that she was clear and innocent of the charges brought against her, but recommended her to be censured for what some persons were pleased to term "levities," their successors in office were in no wise satisfied with this scanty acquittal, as they thought it, but determined that the censure for levities should be expunged, and recommended solemnly, that she should be [191] instantly received by her sovereign, her uncle, and her father, as the purest princess could be received who ever adorned the walks of royal life. This character having, by such trials, been supported — coming out of the fire purer, in the eyes at least of those who are supposed to favour the present charge against her — how do those who are thought to favour this charge, but I should deem unjustly thought — how do they say she demeaned herself the instant she left England? Arriving in Italy, she hires a servant, a person at least then in a menial capacity, of whom I shall afterwards have to say a few words. She moves towards Naples; and, in the course of a few days, certainly in less than a month, the whole of that intercourse commenced, the degradation of the princess is said to have been completed, and all restraint flung away, from the mistress of the servant she becomes the mistress of the lover, of a menial lover, plunging herself into a situation which even profligate women could not for years accustom themselves to. Now, my lords, the whole case against her majesty falls to the ground, if your lordships do not believe, that on the second night of her arrival at Naples the alleged connection between them commenced; because Demont and Majoochi have both sworn to facts, which, if true, nay, if the least of them are true, the connection must have begun from that night, and have continued. And, with what caution, my lords, is this carried on? Suppose that a long course of profligacy could not only bend the mind to the disgraceful circumstances, but render a woman incautious by habit — that is possible. But, it is not so here; for the first act is about the most incautious of the whole. I mean, my lords, her choosing to go where she must be observed, in order to avoid the safer passage to the room, through which it was highly probable no eye could watch her.

Then, my lords, only recollect the way in which the evidence is brought forward, and see the manner in which this case is offered to your lordships belief. How is the room prepared for the first night when these two guilty persons were to meet? — by placing in the room which was to be the scene of their first loves — loves so ardent, that to accomplish them, all regard for decency and decorum had in one instant been flung away, and all caution to conceal them was for ever [192] abandoned — by placing in the room one small iron bedstead, of dimensions hardly sufficient to contain a single person, and only used upon a journey or in a voyage. This was the only preparation in a house, every room of which contained a comfortable bed. Nay, in that very room itself, there was another and a large bed, which the witnesses tell you was left untouched. The witness also tells you, in her first examination, that the larger bed was not much tumbled; but, a day or two afterwards, she mends this materially; I think on the third day. And then, in answer to a question put to her by my learned friend, Mr. Williams, who reminded her that she had said the large bed was not much tumbled, she said, "Yes, I said so when I was examined the other day, but I have since recollected something, and I can tell you more about it now;" and one of your lordships had that explained, and out came the story of the stains last of all — after she had again said, the second time mending the first account, that it looked as if two persons had pressed upon it in the middle. Last of all, she recollected stains; but what those stains were, she could not tell. No person examined her about it: but she did not much like my learned friend's operations the day before. She was not in good charity with Mr. Williams, after the second day's examination, which happened to be in his hands, and not in those of my learned friend the solicitor-general; and, accordingly, she then said she would tell him nothing more, or, as she said herself, she recollected now what she had forgotten then. What did my learned friend Mr. Williams say to her? What had passed in the interval to make her recollect one single tittle which the leading examination of my learned friend the solicitor-general, (I speak it not offensively), with the brief before him, ought not and could not make her remember then? Was it likely or probable she could forget so strong a circumstance as the situation of the bed, when she knew that she came here to prove adultery — when she felt, at every word she spoke, that she was here for no other purpose? My lords, farther, the witness volunteered to say, that the princess returned home early from the opera. I shall show, that she remained till the opera was over, in the presence of the royal family of Naples, and in the royal box. She said, that the Queen was in a state of considerable agitation when she [193] dismissed Billy Austin, for the purpose of being alone. She said that Billy Austin had been accustomed to sleep in the Queen's room. But I shall show your lordships that this had ceased long before. I shall show your lordships that he slept in the next room to her majesty, and that the door of communication was constantly unlocked. The witness said, that her majesty forbad him to come into the room; but she did not forbid him, in the most simple and effectual of all ways — by turning the key. She also describes the Queen as coming home early from the Opera, to do what no man can doubt was adultery, under all the agitation and perturbation of a bridal night. Yet, my lords, will any man believe, that this person, so circumstantial and minute on other occasions, with a perfect sense of the infinite importance to the tale to represent the bed not only as tumbled, which was not much tumbled, but as having been slept in by two persons, which was better; — will any man believe, that if she then knew or afterwards could have recollected, and if it was not a mere afterthought and fabrication, she would not have said at first, "Oh yes, the bed looked as if two persons had slept in it;" and then the stains would have been added, which she probably knows the meaning of, although, like Barbara Kress, she denies she understood them — But it is out of human probability, that persons should recollect, unless they understood them; otherwise, they are no more than ordinary marks or stains, which no person ever heeds, any more than the wind that passes over his head.

My lords; at Naples, another scene took place, to which Demont is the only witness. She tells you no time. She is aware of the consequence of that. She will not give you the means of sifting it, or expose herself to the risk of contradiction. She will not tell you, whether it was a week after their arrival at Naples, whether it was near the beginning or the end of their stay there, or towards the middle of it — but some night during their stay at Naples, she saw Bergami come out of his room naked, except his shirt, without stockings on, without a nightgown on, and moving towards the part of the corridor into which the Queen's chamber entered. She did not start back, she did not retire; but she moved on in the direction towards Bergami. And Bergami did not start back, and Bergami [194] did not make any excuse, and Bergami seeing her moved on also; and she made her escape out of the door; and he still did not bethink him of making an excuse, but he moved on to the accomplishment of his guilty purpose, with more alacrity than almost a husband would have done, in going to the bed-chamber of his own bride. Your lordships will find all this in page 251 of the printed Evidence. I hardly stop to refer to pages, because I do not rely on particular passages, but only draw your attention to the main and leading features of the case, which cannot possibly have escaped the recollection of those of your lordships who heard the evidence as given at your bar.

Let me now remind your lordships of the scene which is represented to have taken place at Catania. And observe, my lords, that here there are two witnesses who might have been called to speak to this transaction, if it really did take place, both of whom were opened by the attorney-general. "Two maids," says he, "were sleeping in the next room to that of the Queen; they both saw her come back from Bergami's room at an early hour of the morning; they both heard the child crying and the countess trying to pacify her; and they both must have known what all this meant." Now, the attorney-general not only does not venture to call both, but only one; but he does not venture to state, that these two women have ever communicated together, from that time to this, upon a tittle of what, that morning or that night, had passed. They never did communicate together — they could not communicate together — nothing of the kind had passed. The thing was false; but Demont alone is called. And what is the story as she tells it? Now, I pray your lordships to attend to it; for it is, if possible, more incredible, upon the face of it, from the multiplied improbabilities under which it labours, than that which I have just run over at Naples. My lords; Bergami usually slept, not only not near the Queen's bed-room there, but on the other side of the court, which formed the centre of the building — on the opposite side of the court was his ordinary bedroom while he was well: but he became sick; he was seized with a severe fever, and he was brought over from his usual room into another room, belonging, I [195] believe, to the countess Oldi; and there he was lying sick for some days. Now, is it not, my lords, a little extraordinary, that the scene of this amour at Catania should be laid — I will not say that it is odd that it should be laid in that room, though that was strange enough, considering it could only be approached through the room of the maids — but that it should have been laid at that time, when Bergami had a fever, and not when he was in good health? Bergami is there more as a patient than as a lover; and yet this is the particular moment chosen for those endearments which are left to be understood; and then her majesty must have Bergami placed just in that situation of all others, in which access to his bedroom was rendered the most difficult and embarrassing — the most impossible, when there were the two maids sleeping in the room between Madame Oldi's and his (for the Queen slept in that which had been Madame Oldi's room). The princess moved out of her room, and one of the servants had undressed her — this very witness had undressed her in her own room; and the story is, that she removed out of her room in the night, and returned in the morning — not that she was always lying in Bergami's room, but that she went there in the night, and coming back in the morning, she was seen by the maids returning. Is it not a marvellous thing, my lords, that this should be the mode of operation? that the thought should not strike her majesty, that, in the accomplishment of this purpose, she was running some risks without any inducements — risks similar to those which she ran at Naples in going through Majoochi's room instead of the empty room — when she might, by an alteration of the rooms, have rendered all safe and easy. She had only to place herself in the servants room or in Madame Oldi's then room, and there she could have had access to Bergami, or Bergami to her, without crossing the threshold of her maids door? But, if your lordships are to believe the representations made to you, all this is only in furtherance of, and in conformity with, the uniform tactics of her majesty, to multiply damning proofs against her own character, her own existence, happiness, comfort, and every thing dear to her in the world. For this is the plot she is in; and she is under a spell, if you believe the witnesses, never to do an act injurious to her character, without providing ample evidence to make that injury effectual.

[196] And now I am told, my lords, that I can contradict all this by means of Marriette Bron, the sister of Demont, and that it must all be believed, unless Marriette Bron is called. I say, why did not you call Marriette Bron? I say, she is your witness; because you opened her evidence; because you vouched her — because you asserted that she was present — because you told us what she saw. And yet you call only her sister, whom you have in your own pay. I say she is your witness; because this is a criminal proceeding; because it is worse than a criminal proceeding; or of a nature higher at least in its exigency of pure, perfect proof. I say a bill of Pains and Penalties is a measure of such severity, that it ought to be supported by evidence, better, if possible, and stronger, than that which takes away life or limb. I say, she is your witness, and not ours; because we are the defendants, the accused and oppressed by the bill of Pains and Penalties, which does not only accuse, but oppress and seek to overwhelm. She is your witness and not ours; because we stand upon our defence, and we defy you to prove us guilty, and unless you prove our guilt, and until you prove that guilt, we ought not — if justice yet reigns here — we ought not to be called upon for a defence. My lords; in a common civil suit, I can comprehend such tactics. I am not bound in claiming, a debt, to call, to prove my case, my adversary's servant, or his clerk, or his relation; but if I am placed upon my defence, even for the lowest crime known in the law, pure, unsuspected testimony must be given, whether it is to be derived from one quarter or from another — whether it is to be got from their side or ours. And I will put a case to remind your lordships of this: — Suppose a high-way robbery or murder to be alleged to have been committed, and a man is put upon his trial, and that a Bow Street officer, panting for his reward, or an accomplice, infamous by his own story, or a spy, degraded by his calling, or any other contaminated, impure, necessarily suspected witness of any description, is alone put forward to prove that charge; and suppose a friend of the defendant were standing by, his servant, or his partner in trade, or any person who is barely competent, by the rules of evidence, to appear as a witness — any person except his wife, who cannot be a witness — I say, no man ought to be put in jeopardy of his life, or be called [197] upon to produce in his defence, that friend, that relation, that servant, unless the case against him has been first proved by unsuspicious testimony; and if only the degraded spy, or the infamous accomplice, or the hired informer, the Bow Street runner, were called against him, their testimony is not such as to make it needful for the prisoner to call his friend. It is the prosecutor who must call his friend: it is no excuse, to say, he is a friend, a relation; a partnership is no excuse: the English law demands, what common sense approves, that every man shall be considered innocent until he is proved to be guilty; and that guilt must be proved at the peril of him who seeks to condemn losing the purpose of his prosecution.

My lords; the Queen is in a most singular situation. She must open her mind to painful constructions of the conduct of those who surround her. She may not view with a charitable eye the actions, and construe the feelings and the motives, of all she has intercourse with. She has been inured, by a long course of prosecution, by the experience of much oppression, by familiarity in her own person with manifold frauds, by all the arts of spies, by all the malice of the spiteful and revengeful, by all those hidden artifices which not even ever are always discovered, which sometimes only she has had the means of tracing and exposing to the day. This life which she has led, and of which this last scene of it which you are now sifting, is very far from forming an exception — all that she has seen heretofore, all that she has seen now since she went last to Italy, and all that she has witnessed here since her return — and she has heard the evidence read, down to the examination of the last witness on the last day — is all calculated to make suspicion general, almost universal, the inmate of an otherwise unsuspecting breast. It is the fate of those who are ill-used — it is one of the hardest portions in the lot of those who have been so buffetted by the Grimms, the Omptedas, the Redens, not to mention the Douglases, the Omptedas of our own land — it is the hard lot of those who have passed such trials, that they never can know whom they dare trust. And even at this hour, her majesty may ignorantly be harbouring a second viper in her bosom, of the same breed as that which has already attempted to destroy her. The Queen, my lords, has about her person a [198] sister of Demont. She was placed there by that Demont. She was kept there by the arts of that Demont. She has corresponded with that Demont — they have corresponded in ciphers together, if you are to believe Demont, which I do not. But I take her as described by the Case for the accusers; and, under all the circumstances, to justify, nay to prescribe suspicion, as a duty to her own personal safety, my learned friends yet leave their case short against her, proved by such evidence as I have described to you, or rather, as it is painted by the witnesses themselves. They say, "why do not you call the waiting-woman, Marriette Bron, who is still left by her sister with you?" My lords, he who fulmined over Greece in words of fire, formerly said, and I would repeat it, and remind your lordships of it, and implore you not to take it in my own words, but to recollect the words that fell from him, in which he imprinted on his countrymen, that instead of all outworks, all fortifications or ramparts, which a man can throw up to protect the feeble, the best security which the feeble have against the fraudful and the powerful, is that mistrust which nature, for wise purposes, to defend the innocent against the strong and the cunning, has implanted in the bosom of all human kind. It is alien to the innocent nature; but it is one of the misfortunes to which innocence, by persecution, is subject to, to be obliged to harbour mistrust, while it is surrounded by agents so little scrupulous as the Grimms and Omptedas, with agents so still less scrupulous, as Majoochi, Sacchi, and Demont.

My lords; I am satisfied in my own mind — I have no doubt — that all who hear me will agree with me, that we are not bound to call that witness. I know not, if we had been ordered to deliver our opinion upon the subject to our illustrious client, that we should not have felt it our duty, as professional men, to awaken suspicions in the Queen's breast, which even yet she does not entertain towards her. I know that it would have been our duty to have done so. I feel that we should have been justified in so doing; and I am confident that we might have appealed to the principles which I have now reminded your lord ships of, and have at once left the case as it stands, without calling that woman. But her majesty has yet seen no reason to part with a faithful servant. Whatever we may suspect — whatever the [199] story of Demont may have taught us to suppose possible — the Queen has hitherto never known any thing to the prejudice of her sister. She will, therefore, be presented before your lordships, and you will have an opportunity of hearing her account of those transactions which have been so falsely told by others. But I again repeat, that it is gratuitous on our part — that we do it voluntarily, from an over-excess of caution, lest it should be suspected by any one, for a moment, that there is any witness whom we dare not to call. — In like manner at Scharnitz — the story told there, which upon the cross-examination of Demont and upon the interrogatories put by your lordships, really melted away so, that very little of it remained, and which little was perfectly equivocal, and quite consistent with the most perfect propriety of demeanor on the part of the Queen. But still, having seen that among some the story made an impression, at first rather than at last, we shall explain it in a way not at all inconsistent with any thing but the peremptory swearing of Demont as to the time, when she says, that she could tell, within half an hour, how long she had been asleep, and when she could not tell, how many hours she was in a room the day before. Demont swore, that on the night Bergami returned with the passports to Scharnitz, he went to the princess's room, and there remained the rest of that night. My lords, I will prove this to be false; I will prove that the moment the passports were brought, the preparations for the journey commenced. I will prove that her majesty set off on her travels, within an hour and a half after the arrival of the passports, and that that time was scarcely sufficient to pack up and prepare for travelling. I will also prove, that during that time the Queen's door was hardly ever shut, and that there was a constant passing, not of Bergami, but of the other gentlemen of her suite — the Queen lying on the bed in her travelling dress, ready to rise at one in the morning, provided the passports arrived so early. — So with respect to the Carlsruhe case. We shall show your lordships that it is impossible that Kress can have sworn true. That she may have seen a woman in that room, if she swears true at all (which I do not believe) I have no occasion to question. But the night that Bergami went home, and the only night he went home, at the time in question, was when the Queen was [200] left behind at a music party in the palace of her illustrious relation to whom she was making a visit. She remained there two hours and a half, and upwards — she remained there until between nine and ten o'clock, and she afterwards went to sup at the Margravine's; where she always supped on the evenings she did not dine there; and Bergami and his sister and child were then at home, when he was taken ill, and went to bed.

My lords; I would remind your lordships of an argument which is used in the present case, and which I was rather surprised to hear, that some persons had been so very inattentive to the details, as to allow to their otherwise acute and ingenious minds. They say, that if this is a plot — if the witnesses are speaking what is untrue — they have not sworn enough; that they ought to have proved it home, as it were; that they ought to have convinced all mankind, that there were acts unequivocally done which nothing but guilt could account for — which were utterly inconsistent with the explanation of innocence. My lords, can those who argue thus, have forgotten two things which every man knows, one general in all cases, and the other happening in every stage of this; namely, that the most effectual way, because the safest, of laying a plot, is not to swear too hard, is not to swear too much, or to come too directly to the point; but to lay the foundation of facts and circumstances, to knit the false with the true, to build the fanciful fabric upon that which exists in nature, and in order to escape detection, to take most especial care — as they have done here — never to have two witnesses to the same facts, and to take the facts as moderately, and as little offensive as possible. The architects of this structure have been well aware of this principle, and have followed the rule throughout. At Naples, why were not other people called? Why were there never two witnesses to the same fact? Because, it is dangerous — because, when you are making a plot, have one witness to a fact, and another to a confirmation; have some things true, which an impeachable evidence can swear; other things fabricated, without which it would be of no avail — but avoid calling witnesses to the same thing at the same time, because the cross-examination is extremely likely to make them contradict themselves. Now, for example, my learned friend opened a case that ought [201] to be proved by a crowd of witnesses. Is it so usual for a princess of Wales, who is seen in a box at Naples, to go on one occasion to the theatre and be hissed, whether she was masked or no? Do the concealments of a masquerade, like the fabrications of this plot, exist longer than from the night till the morning in this place? Would not the hissing of such a person as the princess, for such a cause as the indecency of her dress, have been known to all who attended the place? Would it not afterwards have been believed and told by all the gossips of Naples — Et otiosa credidit Neapolis, Et omne vicinum oppidum. And yet one witness alone, instead of all Naples, appears. In like manner have we no other evidence at Naples of general demeanor. Why have we none to speak to the state of the beds? Why none to the state of the linen? I ask, what is become of Ann Preising? I can answer that question. She is here. I obtained the fact from a witness in cross-examination. Why is she not called? I can answer that question too. She is not an Italian. What reason is there for not calling her? Your lordships can answer that as well as I can. There was every reason for calling her, if they durst have done it. The case is short without it. She could have proved those marks — she was the princess's maid at that time, Beds! she made them. Linen! she had the care of it. Who washed the linen? Where was the laundress, the washerwoman? And yet, she was an Italian, for aught I know, though she is not called, and though her being called must have proved the case, if Dement speaks a single word of truth. They were practised in calling washer-women. They knew the effect of it in England, in the former plot. They were called in the Douglas plot, but they did not prove much, and the plot failed. Made wise by experience, they call them not here; although they know, by that experience, that if they could have stood the examination, this plot could not have failed.

But again, my lords, am I to be told by those who have attended to this evidence, that there has been any very short coming in the swearing of some of the witnesses — that they have not sworn unequivocally — that they have not proved the facts? Why, what more proof of adultery would you have than you have [202] had in this case, if you believe the witnesses, and they are uncontradicted? I do not say, if they are uncontradicted; for I say, your lordships ought not to compel me to contradict such witnesses: but if you believe the witnesses, you have a case of adultery as plainly substantiated in proof as ever gained verdict in Westminster-hall, or ever procured a Divorce Bill to pass through your lordships House. All that Demont tells, all that Majoochi tells, every tittle of what Sacchi tells at the end of his evidence, is proof positive of the crime of adultery. If you believe Sacchi, Bergami was seen twice going into her majesty's bed-room, and not coming out from thence. If you believe Sacchi, adultery is the least of her crime — she is as bad as Messalina — she is worse, or as bad, as the Jacobins of Paris covered even themselves with eternal infamy, by endeavouring to prove Marie Antoinette to have been.

My lords; I have another remark to make, before I leave this case. I have heard it said, by some acute sifters of evidence, "Oh! you have damaged the witnesses, but only by proving perjury, by proving falsehoods indeed, in unimportant particulars." I need only remind your lordships, that this is an observation which can only come from the lay part of the community. Any lawyer at once will see how ridiculous, if I may so speak, such an objection must always be. If I am to confirm the testimony of an accomplice — if I am to set up an informer — no doubt my confirmation ought to extend to matters connected with the crime — no doubt it must be an important particular that it will avail me to prove by way of confirmation. But it is quite the reverse in respect to pulling down a perjured witness, or a witness suspected of swearing falsely. It is quite enough if he perjure himself in any part, to take away all credit from the whole of his testimony. Can it be said, that you are to pick and choose — that you are to believe part, and reject the rest as false? You may — if you are convinced the part you believe is true, notwithstanding other parts which you do not believe; those parts not being falsely stated wilfully by him, but parts which you do not believe, because he may have been ignorant of or may have forgotten them. In this sense, you may choose — culling the part you believe, and separating the part you think contradicted. But if one part is not only not true — is not only not consistent [203] with the fact, but is falsely sworn to on his part — if you are satisfied that one part of his story is an invention, to use the plain word, a lie; good God! my lords, what safety is there for human kind against the malice of their enemies — what chance of escaping from the toils of the perjured and unprincipled conspirator, if you are to believe part of a tale, even if ten witnesses swear to it, all of whom you convict of lying in some other part of the story? I only pray your lordships to consider what it is that forms the safeguard of each and every one of you against the arts of the mercenary or spiteful conspirator. Suppose any one man — and let each of your lordships lay this to his mind before you dismiss this topic — suppose any one of your lordships were to meet with any misfortune, the greatest that can befall a human being, and the greater in proportion as he is of an honourable mind, whose soul is alien even to any idea or glance of suspicion of such a case being possible to himself — suppose that accident, which has happened to the best and purest of men, and which may happen to any of us to-morrow, and which if it happens must succeed against you to-morrow, if you adopt the principle I am struggling against — suppose any one of your lordships charged by a mercenary scoundrel with the perpetration of a crime at which we show in this country our infinite horror, by almost, and most justly, considering the base charge to stand in some sort in the place of proof — suppose this plot laid to defame the fairest reputation in England — I say that reputation must be saved, if escape it may, only by one means. No perjury can be expected to be exposed in the main, the principal, part of the fabric: that can be easily defended from any attack against it; all the arts of the defendant's counsel and all his experience, will be exhausted in vain: the plotter knows how (as these conspirators have done) to take care that only one person shall swear to a fact, to lay no others present, to choose the time and select the place when contradiction cannot be given, by knowing the time and the place where any one of your lordships may have been alone at any moment. Contradiction is not hereto be expected; refutation is impossible. Prevarication of the witness upon the principal part of his case, beyond all calculation of chances there will not be. But you will be defended by counsel; and the court before whom [204] you are tried will have you acquitted, if the villain, who has told a consistent, firm tale immoveably, though not contradicted, though not touched, upon the story itself, tells the least falsehood upon the most unimportant particulars to which your advocate shall examine him. My lords, I ask for the Queen no other justice: I desire she may have no other safety than that which would form the only safety to any of your lordships in such cases, before any court that deserved the name of a court of justice.

My lords; I am told that the situation of life in which Bergami, since promoted to be the Queen's chamberlain, originally moved, that that sphere of life, compared with the fortune which has since attended him in her service, is of itself matter of suspicion. I should be sorry, my lords, to have lived to see the day, when nothing more was required to ruin any exalted character in this free country, than the having shown favour to a meritorious servant, by promoting him above his rank in life. It is a lot which has happened — which has been that of many of those who have been the ornaments of their country. God forbid we should ever see the time, when all ranks here, all stations in the community, except the highest, were not open to all men; and that we should ever reckon it of itself a circumstance even of suspicion in any person — for neither sex can be exempt from an inference of such a nature if it is once made general and absolute — that he has been promoted! Let me, however, remind your lordships, that the rapidity of the promotion of Bergami has been greatly overstated; and, the manner in which it took place is a convincing proof, that the story of love having been the cause of it, is inconsistent with the fact. Now this I ask, from a distinct recollection of the dates in the evidence; before you. Believe Majoochi and Demont, and three weeks after Bergami's arrival in the household, he was promoted to her bed. How was it with respect to the board? Because, after that, he continued in the situation of courier; he dined with the servants, and lived not even with the chamberlains; certainly not, for they were at her table, as usual. He continued to dine with the servants at Genoa; not with standing Majoochi's story, it is proved to your lordships that he did not dine with her. He continued as a courier, even after he had once sat at her majesty's table by accident. It appears [205] even in the evidence (believing it to be true), that the Queen sat at table where he was for the space of one day. He, however, still continued a courier; and it was only on the eve of the long voyage, that he was admitted to her table, commencing with the journey to Mont St. Gothard. He continued in his situation of courier, still in livery; until, by degrees, he was promoted, first to travel in a carriage of his own, instead of riding on horseback. Then he was promoted occasionally to sit at the same table with the Queen, and at last he was appointed a chamberlain generally. My lords, this is not consistent with the story told of Naples. Show me, my lords, the woman, particularly the amorous, the imprudent, the insane woman her majesty is described to be by these perjured witnesses, who would have allowed her paramour, after indulging in all the gratifications described at Naples, for weeks and months, to continue for months, and almost for years, in an apparently menial capacity. My lords, this is not the rapidity of pace with which Jove promotes his favourite votaries; it much more resembles the sluggish progress with which merit finds its way in the world, even in courts. My lords, he was a man of merit, as you will hear in evidence — if you put me on calling any. He was not of the low origin he has been described to be. He was a person whose father held the situation of a proprietor, of moderate income, in the north of Italy. He had got into difficulties, as has happened to many of the Italian gentry of late years; and his son, if I mistake not, had sold his estate, in order to pay his father's debts. He was reduced; but he was a reduced gentleman. When he was in the service of general Pino, he was recognized as such. The general repeatedly favoured him as such; he has dined at his table, general Pino being the commander-in-chief in the Milanese. He has dined at his table during the Spanish campaigns. He was respected in that situation — he was esteemed by those whom he served at that time. They encouraged him, as knowing his former pretensions and his present merits; and when be was hired, he was proposed by a gentleman, an Austrian nobleman, then living in Italy, in the Austrian service — he was proposed to the Queen's chamberlain, as a courier, there being a vacancy, and was hired, without the knowledge of her majesty, and before she had even seen [206] him. The Austrian nobleman, when he offered him as a courier, said, be fairly confessed, he hoped, if he behaved well, he might be promoted, because he was a man whose family had seen better days, because he was a faithful servant, and with ideas belonging rather to his former than to his present situation. It was almost a condition of his going, that he should go for the present as a courier, with the expectation of soon filling some other vacant place.

I do not dwell on this, my lords, as of any importance to the case; for whether I shall think it necessary to prove it or not, I consider that I have already disposed of the Case in the comments which I have made upon the Evidence, and in the appeal which I have made to the general principles of criminal justice. But, as the conduct of her majesty has been so unsparingly scrutinised, and as it is important to show, that impropriety existed not, where I defy guilt to be proved, I thought it requisite to dwell on this prominent feature in the cause. If the Queen had frequented companies below her station — if she had lowered her dignity — if she had followed courses which, though not guilty, might be deemed improper and inconsistent — if she had been proved guilty of any unworthiness — I could have trod upon high ground indeed But I have no occasion to occupy it. I say, guilt there is none — levity there is none — unworthiness there is none. But if there had been any of the latter, I might have appealed to your lordships, upon a ground which always supports virtue in jeopardy, the course of her former life, at home, among her own relations, before she was frowned upon here — while she had protection among you — while she had the most powerful of all protection, that of our late venerable monarch. I hold in my hand a testimonial, which cannot be read — which I am sure will not be weighed — without the deepest sense of its importance: above all, without a feeling of sorrow, when we reflect upon the reign that has passed. It is a melancholy proof — more melancholy, because we no longer have him who furnishes it amongst us, spared to us — but it is a proof, how that illustrious sovereign viewed her, whom he knew better than all others — whom he loved more than all the rest of her family — even than those upon whose affection she had a greater claim. The plainness, and [207] honesty, and intelligible, manly sense of this Letter is such, that I cannot refrain from the gratification of reading it. It was written in 1804 —

Windsor Castle, Nov. 13th, 1804.

My dearest Daughter-in-Law and Niece; —

Yesterday I, and the rest of my family, had an interview with the prince of Wales at Kew. Care was taken on all sides to avoid all subjects of altercation or explanation, consequently the conversation was neither instructive nor entertaining; but it leaves the prince of Wales in a situation to show whether his desire to return to his family is only verbal or real, — (a difference which George the 3rd never knew, except in others) — which time alone can show. I am not idle in my endeavours to make inquiries, that may enable me to communicate some plan for the advantage of the dear child you and me with so much reason must interest ourselves; and its effecting my having the happiness of living more with you is no small incentative to my forming some ideas on the subject; but you may depend on their being not decided upon, without your thorough and cordial concurrence, for your authority as mother it is my object to support.

Believe me, at all times,
My dearest daughter-in-law and niece,
Your most affectionate father-in-law and uncle,

GEORGE R.

This, my lords, was the opinion which this good man, not ignorant of human affairs, no ill judge of human character, had formed of this near and cherished relation, and upon which in the most delicate particulars, the care of his granddaughter and the heir of his crown, he honestly, really, and not in mere words, always acted.

I might now read to your lordships, a Letter from his illustrious successor, not written in the same tone of affection — not indicative of the same tone of regard — but by no means indicative of any want of confidence, or at least of any desire harshly to trammel his royal consort's conduct. I allude to a Letter which has been so often before your lordships in other shapes, that I may not think it necessary to repeat it here. It is a permission to live apart, and a desire never to come together again — the expression of an opinion, that their happiness was better consulted, and pursued asunder, and a [208] very plain indication, that her majesty's conduct should at least not be watched with all the scrupulousness and all the rigour and scrutinising agency, which has brought the present bill of Pains and Penalties before your lordships. [Cries of "Read, read!" The learned counsel accordingly read the Letter, as follows:]

Madam;

As lord Cholmondeley informs me, that you wish I would define in writing, the terms upon which we are to live, I shall endeavour to explain myself upon that head with as much clearness and with as much propriety as the nature of the subject will admit. Our inclinations are not in our power, nor should either of us be held answerable to the other, because nature has not made us suitable to each other. Tranquil and comfortable society is, however, in our power; let our intercourse, therefore, be restricted to that, and I will distinctly subscribe to the condition which you required, through lady Cholmondeley, that even in the event of any accident happening to my daughter, which I trust Providence in its mercy will avert, I shall not infringe the terms of the restriction, by proposing at any period, a connexion of a more particular nature. I shall now finally close this disagreeable correspondence, trusting, that, as we have completely explained ourselves to each other, the rest of our lives will be passed in uninterrupted tranquillity. I am, Madam, with great truth,

Very sincerely yours,
GEORGE P.
Windsor Castle,
April 30th, 1796.

My lords; I do not call this, as it has been termed, a Letter of Licence — this was the term applied to it, on the former occasion, by those who are now, unhappily for the Queen, no more — but I think it such an epistle as would make it matter of natural wonderment to the person who received it, that her conduct should ever after — and more especially the more rigorously, the older the parties are growing — become the subject of the most unceasing, unscrupulous watching and investigation.

Such then, my lords, is this Case. And again let me call on your lordships, even at the risk of repetition, never to dismiss for a moment from [209] your minds, the two great points upon which I rest my attack upon the Evidence; — first, that they have not proved the facts by the good witnesses who were within their reach, whom they have no shadow of pretext for not calling; — and secondly, that the witnesses whom they have ventured to call are, every one of them, injured in their credit. How, I again ask, my lords, is a plot ever to be discovered, except by the means of these two principles? Nay, there are instances, in which plots have been discovered, through the medium of the second principle, when the first had happened to fail. When venerable witnesses have been seen to be brought forward, when persons above all suspicion have lent themselves for a season to impure plans, when nothing seemed possible, when no resource for the guiltless seemed open — they have almost providentially escaped from the snare by the second of those two principles; by the evidence breaking down where it was not expected to be sifted, by a weak point being found, where no pains, from not foreseeing the attack, had been made to support it. Your lordships recollect that great passage — I say great, for it is poetically just and eloquent — in the Sacred Writings, where the Elders had joined themselves, two of them, in a plot which had appeared to have succeeded, "for that," as the Scriptures say, "they had hardened their hearts, and had turned away their eyes, that they might not look at Heaven, and that they might do the purposes of unjust judgments." But they, though giving a clear, consistent, uncontradicted story, were disappointed, and their victim was rescued from their grip, by the trifling circumstance of a contradiction about a mastich tree. Let not man call those contradictions or those falsehoods which false witnesses swear to from needless falsehood, such as Sacchi about his changing his name, or such as Demont about her letters, or such as Majoochi about the banker's clerk, or such as all the others belonging to the other witnesses not going to the main body of the case, but to the main body of the credit of the witnesses — let not man rashly and blindly, call those accidents. — They are dispensations of that Providence, which wills not that the guilty should triumph, and which favourably protects the innocent.

Such, my lords, is this Case now before [210] you! Such is the Evidence in support of this measure — inadequate to prove a debt — impotent to deprive of a civil right — ridiculous to convict of the lowest offence — scandalous if brought forward to support a charge of the highest nature which the law knows — monstrous to ruin the honour of an English Queen! What shall I say, then, if this is their case — if this is the species of proof by which an act of judicial legislation, an ex post facto law, is sought to be passed against this defenceless woman? My lords, I pray your lordships to pause. You are standing upon the brink of a precipice. It will go forth your judgment, if it goes against the Queen. But it will be the only judgment you ever will pronounce which will fail in its object, and return upon those who give it. Save the country, my lords, from the horrors of this catastrophe — save yourselves from this situation — rescue that country, of which you are the ornaments, but in which you could flourish no longer, when severed from the people, than the blossom when cut off from the root and the stem of the tree. Save that country, that you may continue to adorn it — save the Crown, which is in jeopardy — the Aristocracy which is shaken — the Altar itself, which never more can stand secure amongst the shocks that shall rend its kindred throne. You have said, my lords, you have willed — the Church and the King have willed — that the Queen should be deprived of its solemn service. She has indeed, instead of that solemnity, the heartfelt prayers of the people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do here pour forth my supplications at the Throne of Mercy, that that mercy may be poured down upon the people, in a larger measure than the merits of its rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to justice.

Defence of Queen Caroline

following the Bill of Pains and Penalties being brought against her

House of Lords, 3 October 1820

[112] The order of the day being read for the further consideration and second reading of the bill, intituled "An Act to deprive Her Majesty Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of the title, prerogatives, rights, privileges, and exemptions of Queen Consort of this realm, and to dissolve the marriage between his majesty and the said Caroline Amelia Elizabeth;" and for hearing counsel for and against the same; Counsel were accordingly called in.

Then Mr. Brougham, the Attorney-General of the Queen, opened the defence: —

May it please your Lordships —

The time is now come when I feel that I shall truly stand in need of all your indulgence. It is not merely the august presence of this assembly which embarrasses me; for I have oftentimes had experience of its condescension — nor the novelty of this proceeding that perplexes me; for the mind gradually gets reconciled to the strangest things — nor is it the magnitude of this cause that oppresses me; for I am borne up and cheered by that conviction of its justice, which I share with all mankind; but, my lords, it is the very force of that conviction, the knowledge that it operates universally, the feeling that it operates rightly, which now dismays me with the apprehension, [113] that my unworthy mode of handling it, may, for the first time, injure it; and, while others have trembled for a guilty client, or been anxious in a doubtful case, or crippled with a consciousness of some hidden weakness, or chilled by the influence, or dismayed by the hostility, of public opinion, I, knowing that here there is no guiltiness to conceal, nor any thing, save the resources of perjury to dread, am haunted with the apprehension, that my feeble discharge of this duty may for the first time cast that cause into doubt, and may turn against me for condemnation those millions of your lordships' countrymen, whose jealous eyes are now watching us, and who will not fail to impute it to me, if your lordships should reverse the judgment which the Case for the Charge has extorted from them. And I feel, my lords, under this weight so troubled, that I can hardly at this moment, with all the reflection which the indulgence of your lordships has accorded to me, compose my spirits to the discharge of my professional duty, under the weight of that grave responsibility which accompanies it. It is no light addition to this feeling, that I foresee, though at some distance, happily, that, before these proceedings close, it may be my unexampled lot to discharge a duty, in which the loyalty of a good subject may, among the ignorant, among the thoughtless — certainly not with your lordships for a moment — suffer an impeachment.

My lords; the princess Caroline of Brunswick arrived in this country in the year 1795 — the niece of our sovereign, the intended consort of his heir apparent, and herself not a very remote heir to the crown of these realms. But I now go back to that period, only for the purpose of passing over all the interval which elapsed between that arrival and her departure in 1814. I rejoice that, for the present at least, the most faithful discharge of my duty permits me to draw this veil; but I cannot do so without pausing for an instant, to guard myself against a misrepresentation to which I know this cause may not unnaturally be exposed, and to assure your lordships most solemnly, that if I did not think that the cause of the Queen, as attempted to be established by the evidence against her, not only does not require recrimination at present — not only imposes no duty of even uttering one whisper by way of attack, by way of insinuation, against the conduct of her [114] illustrious husband — but that it prescribes to me, for the present, silence upon this great and painful head of the case — I solemnly assure your lordships, that but for this conviction, my lips on that branch would not be closed; for, in discretionally abandoning the exercise of that power which I feel I have, in postponing for the present the statement of that case of which I am possessed, I feel confident that I am waving a right which I have, and abstaining from the use of materials which are mine. And let it not be thought, my lords, that if either now I did conceive, or if hereafter I should so far be disappointed in my estimate of the failure of the Case against me, as to feel it necessary to exercise that right — let no man vainly suppose, that not only I, but that any, the youngest member of the profession would hesitate one moment in the fearless discharge of that duty. I once before took leave to remind your lordships — which was unnecessary, but there are many whom it may be needful to remind — that an advocate, by the sacred duty of his connection with his client, knows, in the discharge of that office, but one person in the world, that client and none other. To save that client by all expedient means — to protect that client at all hazards and costs to all others, and among others to himself — is the highest and most unquestioned of his duties; and he must not regard the alarm, the suffering, the torment, the destruction, which he may bring upon any other; nay, separating even the duties of a patriot from those of an advocate, he must go on reckless of the consequences, if his fate it should unhappily be, to involve his country in confusion for his client.

But, my lords, I am not reduced to this painful necessity. I feel that if I were to touch that branch of the Case now, until any event shall afterwards show that unhappily I am deceiving myself — I feel that if I were now to approach that branch of the Case, I should seem to give up the higher ground of innocence on which I put it; I should seem to be justifying when I plead not guilty; I should seem to argue in extenuation and in palliation of offences, or levities, or improprieties, the least and the lightest of which I stand here to deny. For it is false, as has been said — it is foul and false as those who dared to say, who, pretending to discharge the higher duties to God, have shown, that they know not the first of their duties to their fellow-creatures — it is foul and false [115] and scandalous in those who have said (and they know that it is so who have dared to say), that there are improprieties admitted to be proved against the Queen. I deny that the admission has been made. I contend that the evidence does not prove them. I will show you that the evidence disproves them. One admission, doubtless, I do make; and let my learned friends who are of counsel for the Bill take all the benefit of it, for it is all that they have proved by their evidence. I grant that her majesty left this country, and went to reside in Italy. I grant that her society was chiefly foreign. I grant that it was an inferior society to that in which she once moved in this country. I admit, my lords, that while here, and while happy in the protection — not perhaps, of her own family, after the fatal event which deprived it of its head; but while enjoying the society of your lordships and the families of your lordships, I grant that the Queen moved in a more choice, in perhaps a more dignified society, than she did in Italy. And the charge against her is, that she has associated with Italians, instead of her own countrymen and countrywomen; and that, instead of the peeresses of England, she has sometimes associated with Italian nobility, and sometimes with persons of the commonalty of that country. But, who are they that bring this charge? Others may accuse her — others may blame her for going abroad — others may tell tales of the consequences of living among Italians, and of not associating with the women of her country, or of her adopted country; but it is not your lordships that have any right to say so. It is not you, my lords, that can fling this at her majesty. You are the last persons in the world — you, who now presume to judge her, are the last persons in the world so to charge her; for you are the witnesses whom she must call to vindicate her from that charge. You are the last persons who can so charge her; for you, being her witnesses, have been also the instigators of that only admissible crime. While she was here, she courteously opened the doors of her palace to the families of your lordships. She graciously condescended to mix herself, in the habits of most familiar life, with those virtuous and distinguished persons. She condescended to court your society — and, as long as it suited purposes not of hers — as [116] long as it was subservient to views not of her own — as long as it served interests in which she had no concern — she did not court that society in vain. But when changes took place — when other views arose — when that power was to be retained which she had been made the instrument of grasping — when that lust of power and place was to be continued its gratification, to the first gratification of which she had been made the victim — then her doors were opened in vain; then that society of the peeresses of England was withholden from her; then she was reduced to the alternative humiliating indeed, for I say that her condescension was no humiliation. She was only lowering herself, by omitting the distinction of rank to enjoy the first society in the world. But then it pleased you to reduce her to what was really humiliation — either to acknowledge that you had deserted her, to seek the company of those who now made it a favour, which she saw they unwillingly granted, or to leave the country and have recourse to other company. I say then, my lords, that it is not here that I must be told — it is not in the presence of your lordships I must expect to hear any one lift his voice to complain, that the princess of Wales went to reside in Italy, and associated with those whose society she neither ought to have chosen, nor perhaps would have chosen — certainly would not have chosen — perhaps I may say ought not to have chosen — had she been in other or happier circumstances.

In the midst of this, and of so much suffering as to an ingenuous mind such conduct could not fail to cause, she still had one resource, and which, for a space, was allowed to remain to her — I need hardly say I mean the comfort of knowing that she still possessed the undiminished attachment and grateful respect of her justly respected and deeply lamented daughter. An event took place which, of all others, most excites the feelings of a parent — that daughter was about to form a union upon which the happiness — upon which, alas! the Queen knew too well how much the happiness — or the misery of future life depended. No announcement was made to her majesty of the projected alliance. All England occupied with the subject — Europe looking on with an interest which it certainly had in so great an event — England had it announced; Europe had it announced — but the one person to whom no notice of it [117] was given, was the mother of the bride who was to be espoused; and all that she had done then to deserve this treatment was, with respect to one of the illustrious parties, that she had been proved, by his evidence against her, to be not guilty of the charge; and, with respect to his servants, that they had formerly used her as the tool by which their ambition was to be gratified. The marriage itself was consummated. Still, no notice thereof was communicated to the Queen. She heard it accidentally by a courier who was going to announce the intelligence to the Pope, that ancient, intimate, much-valued ally of the Protestant Crown of these realms. A prospect grateful to the whole nation, interesting to all Europe, was now afforded, that the marriage would be a fruitful source of stability to the royal family of these realms. The whole of that period, painfully interesting to a parent as well as to a husband, was passed without the slightest communication; and if the princess Charlotte's own feelings had prompted her to open one, she was in a state of anxiety of mind and of delicacy of frame, in consequence of that her first pregnancy, which made it dangerous to have a struggle between power and authority on the one hand, and affection and duty on the other. An event truly fatal followed, which plunged the whole of England into grief and gloom; in which all our foreign neighbours sympathized: and while, with a due regard to the feelings of those foreign allies, and even of strange powers and princes, with whom we had no alliance that event was speedily communicated by particular messengers to each, the person in all the world who had the deepest interest in that event — the person whose feelings, above those of all the rest of mankind, were most overwhelmed and stunned by it, was left to be stunned and overwhelmed by it accidentally; as she had, by accident, heard of the marriage. But, if she had not heard the dreadful news by accident, she would, ere long, have felt it; for the decease of the princess Charlotte was communicated to her mother, by the issuing of the Milan Commission and the commencement of the proceedings for the third time against her character and her life.

See, my lords, the unhappy fate of this illustrious woman! It has been her lot always to lose her surest stay, her best protector, when the dangers most thickened around her; and, by a coincidence [118] almost miraculous, there has hardly been one of her defenders withdrawn from her, that his loss has not been the signal of an attack upon her existence. Mr. Pitt was her earliest defender and friend in this country. He died in 1806; and, but a few weeks afterwards, the first inquiry into the conduct of her royal highness began. He left her a legacy to Mr. Perceval, her firm, dauntless, most able advocate. And, no sooner had the hand of an assassin laid Mr. Perceval low, than she felt the calamity of his death, in the renewal of the attacks, which his gallantry, his skill, and his invariable constancy had discomfited. Mr. Whitbread then undertook her defence; and, when that catastrophe happened, which all good men lament, without any distinction of party or sect, again commenced the distant grumbling of the storm; for it then, happily, was never allowed to approach her, because her daughter stood her friend, and there were who worshipped the rising sun. But, when she lost that amiable and beloved daughter, all which might have been expected here — all which might have been dreaded by her if she had not been innocent — all she did dread — because, who, innocent or guilty, loves persecution; who delights in trial, when character and honour are safe? — all was at once allowed to burst upon her head; and the operations commenced by the Milan Commission. And, my lords, as if there were no possibility of the Queen losing a protector without some most important act being played in this drama against her, the day which saw the venerable remains of our revered sovereign consigned to the tomb — of that sovereign who, from the first outset of the princess in English life, had been her constant and steady defender — that same sun ushered the ringleader of the band of perjured witnesses into the palace of his illustrious successor! Why, my lords, do I mention these things? Not for the sake of making so trite a remark, as that trading politicians are selfish — that spite is twin-brother to ingratitude — that nothing will bind base natures — that favours conferred, and the duty of gratitude neglected, only make those natures the more malignant. My lords, the topic would be trite and general, and I should be ashamed to trouble your lordships with it; but I say this once more, in order to express my deep sense of the unworthiness with which I now succeed such powerful defenders, and [119] my alarm lest my exertions should fail to do what theirs, had they been living, must have accomplished.

My lords; I pray your attention for a few moments, to what all this has resulted in. It has ended in the getting up of a story, to the general features of which I am now first about to direct the attention of your lordships. But I must begin by praying you to recollect what the Evidence has not only not proved, but is very likely to have discharged from the memory of your lordships — I mean the Opening of my learned friend, the Attorney-General. Now, he shall himself describe, in his own words, the plan and the construction of that opening statement. It is most material for your lordships to direct your attention to this; because much of the argument rests on this comparative view. He did not then make a general speech, without book, without direction or instruction; but his speech was the spoken evidence; it was the transcript of that which he had before him; and the way in which that transcript was prepared, I leave your lordships, even uninformed to a certain degree as you now must needs be, to conjecture. "I will," said my learned friend — and every one who heard him make the promise, and who knows his strictly honourable nature, must have expected its accurate fulfilment — "I will most conscientiously state nothing which I do not, in my conscience, believe I shall be able to substantiate in proof; but I will withhold nothing, upon which I have the same conviction." I believed the attorney-general when I heard him promise. I knew that he spoke from his conscience; and now that I see he has failed in the fulfilment, I equally well know that there is but one cause for the failure — that he told you what he had in his brief, which he had got into his brief from the mouths of the witnesses. He could get it in no other way but that. The witnesses who had told falsehoods before, were scared from repeating them here, before your lordships. Now, I will give your lordships one or two specimens of this; because I think these samples will enable you to form a pretty accurate estimate, not only of the value of that evidence, where it comes up to my learned friend's Opening, but also to form a pretty good guess of the manner in which that part of it which did succeed [120] was prepared for that purpose. I will merely take one or two of the leading witnesses, and compare one or two of the matters which my learned friend opened, and will not tire you with the manner in which they told you the story.

First, my learned friend said, that the Evidence of the Queen's improper conduct would come down almost "until the time at which I have now the honour of addressing your lordships." I am quoting the words of my learned friend, from the short-hand writer's notes. In fact, by the Evidence, that "almost" means up to the present time, all but three years; that is to say, all but a space of time, exactly equal to that space of time over which the other part of the Evidence extends. — At Naples, where the scene is laid which is first so sedulously brought before your lordships, as if the first connection between the two parties began upon that occasion — as if that were the night when the guilty intentions, which they long had been harbouring, but for want of opportunity had not been able to fulfil, were at length gratified — at Naples — I pray your lordships to attend to the manner in which he opened this first and most important branch of his whole case, and which if it fails, that failure must affect the statement of circumstances, not only in this part in the Evidence, but in all the subsequent stages of it — How does my learned friend open that part of his case? "I shall show you," says he, "that there are clear, decisive marks of two persons having slept in the bed — the night that the Queen came home, the second night she was at Naples, she returned early from the Opera; she went to her own room, from thence she repaired to Bergami's room, where Bergami himself was — the next day she was not visible till an unusually late hour, and was inaccessible to the nobility of Naples. Every one of these assertions, rising one above another in succession and importance, but even the lowest of them of great moment to the case against her majesty — every one of them not only is false, but is negatived by the Witness produced to support them. Demont gives no "decisive marks;" she gives a doubtful and hesitating case. With one exception, there is nothing specific, even in what [121] she swears; and with that I shall afterwards come to deal. But she denies that she knew where the Queen went when she first left her own bedroom. She denies that she knew where Bergami was at that time. She says affirmatively that the next morning the Queen was up and alert by the usual lime. Not one tittle of evidence does she give, or any body else, of her having refused access to any one person who called; nor is any evidence given (to make it more complete) that any body called that morning.

Then come we to that which my learned friend opened with more than even his wonted precision. We know that all the rest was from his instructions. It could be from no other source. He had never been in Italy. Neither he nor my learned friend, the solicitor-general, have given us any idea of their knowing what sort of a country it is — that they know any thing of a masquerade — that they know any thing of a Cassino. My learned friend has represented as if the being blackballed at that Cassino is ruin to a person's character; forgetting who may be the members of the society at that Cassino — that there may be a colonel Browne — that it is held at the very place where the Milan Commission was held. "But," says my learned friend, the solicitor-general, "who ever heard of the wife of a royal prince of this country going disguised to a masquerade? Who would have thought that, being disguised, and being on her way to a masquerade, she did not go in her own state coach, with her livery servants, with a coachman bedizened with lacquays plaistered, with all the "pomp, pride, and circumstance" of a court or a birthday, but that she went in a common hired carriage, without the royal arms, without splendor and garb, out at the back-door, instead of issuing out of the front door, with all the world spectators. Nay, I only wonder that my learned friend did not state, that she went to a masquerade in a domino, and a false face! My lords, it was not, therefore, from their own personal observation, certainly not from having been present at these royal recreations of Murat's court, that my learned friends obtained their knowledge of this cause; but they have it from Demont or Majoochi; the witnesses who have been examined again and again; and who have again and again told the same story; but which story being founded in fact, they now recollected only the part that was true, and forgot what was untrue. [122] "Then," says my learned friend, in this instance which I am now going to state, leaving us to our general suspicions as to where he got his knowledge upon the other circumstances, and coming to something more specific, "I am instructed to state," and in another instance, "the witness says," so and so, showing he was reading the witness's deposition. "I am instructed to state, that the dress which the princess had assumed, or rather the want of it in part, was extremely indecent and disgusting;" and he adds afterwards, in commenting upon it, that it was of the "most indecent description;" so that she was, on account of that indecency, on account of the disgusting nature of it, by those who actually saw it, hooted from the public theatre. Your lordships will recollect what it came to — that the princess was there in a dress that was exceedingly ugly — the maid Demont said, in a "very ugly" dress; and that was all my learned friend could get her now to assert — that it was without form, and ugly — masques came about her, and she, unknown in her own masque — for, strange as it may appear to my learned friend, a person at a masquerade endeavours to be disguised — was attacked from joke or from spite — oftener from joke than from spite; her own dress being of that ugly description — from what reason is left to this moment unexplained.

My lords; I should fatigue your lordships if I were to go over other instances, I shall only mention that at Messina. Voices are said to have been heard. The attorney-general opened, that at Messina he should prove, that the princess and Bergami were locked up in the same room and were heard speaking together. That is now reduced, by the evidence, to certain voices being heard, she cannot say whose. At Savona, where my learned friend gives, you, as he generally does in his speech, the very day of the month, the 12th of April, he stated, that the only access to the princess's room was through Bergami's, where there was no bed, but that in the princess's room there was a large bed. The witness proved only one of those particulars out of three.

Passing over a variety of particulars, I shall give only one or two instances from Majoochi's and Sacchi's evidence. "The princess remained in Bergami's [123] room a very considerable time," the night I that Majoochi swore she went into his room, "and there the Witness heard them kissing each other," says the attorney-general. Majoochi says, she remained there one of the times ten minutes, the other fifteen; and that he only heard a whispering. Now, as to Sacchi. The story as told by my learned friend, from the brief in his hand, and which I have no doubt my learned friend has in his papers, and that Sacchi had told before at Milan, is, that a courier one night returned from Milan, that is, that he, Sacchi, returned as a courier from Milan, for it was he whom he meant — that finding Bergami out of his own room, he looked about and saw him come out of the Queen's room undressed — that all the family were in bed — that he observed him — that he spoke to him — and that Bergami explained it by saying, he had gone, hearing his child cry, to see what was the matter; and desired him not to mention any thing about it. — Sacchi negatives this, as far as a man speaking to so unusual a circumstance, which if it had happened, must have forcibly impressed his recollection, can do so. He denies it as strongly as a man can, by denying all recollection of any such particulars, although not for want of examination; for my learned friend, the solicitor-general, questions him over and over again, and he cannot get him to come within a mile of such a fact.

Then come we to the disgraceful scenes, as the attorney-general described them, at the Barona; which he said — and if they had been as they were represented to him, I doubt not he used a very fair expression — he did not tell us what they were, but "they were so disgraceful, that it rather made that house deserve the name of a brothel, more than that of a palace, or a place fit for the reception of her majesty, or a person of the least virtue or delicacy." Here, there is a most entire failure of proof from all the witnesses.

Then we are told, that at Naples the attendants were shocked and surprised by the conduct of the Queen — that in Sicily no doubt was entertained by them, from what they saw of the familiarities between the parties, that a criminal intercourse was going on there. Not one of those attendants describes that effect to have [124] been produced upon their minds by what they saw. I shall afterwards come to what they did see; but they do not tell you this, though frequently prompted to do it. Then, as to the visiting of the nobility — that the Queen's society was given up by the ladies of rank of her own country, from the moment she left this country — that they all fell away — in short, that she was treated abroad, I know not from what motive, with something of the same abandonment with which she was treated in this country; I well know from what motive. All this is disproved by the evidence. How came my learned friend to forget the fact of that most respectable woman, lady Charlotte Lindsay, joining her at Naples, after her conduct had been observed by all the servants; with which servants lady Charlotte Lindsay naturally lived on terms of intimacy, and between which servants, I have no idea that any thing of that grave-like secrecy existed, which each of them has represented to have existed between themselves up to the time they came to the Cotton Garden depot, and up to the moment that they brought from that depot to your lordships' bar, the resources of their perjury. Lady Charlotte Lindsay, lord and lady Glenbervie, Mrs. Falconet and others had no doubt some intercourse with those Neapolitan servants, all of whom are represented as having been perfectly astounded with the impropriety, nay the indecency of the conduct of their royal mistress; and yet those persons are proved to have joined her, some at Naples, some at Rome, others at Leghorn, and to have associated with her, in spite of all this open and avowed indecorum.

But, even to a much later period, and in higher quarters, the Queen's company has been proved, by my learned friend's case, not to have been treated abroad with the neglect which it experienced here. She has been, in the first place; courteously received, even after her return from the long voyage, by the legitimate sovereign prince of Baden, a prince with a legitimate origin, though with a revolutionary accession to his territory. Equally well received was she by the still more legitimate Bourbons at Palermo; but courted was her society by the legitimate Stuarts of Sardinia, the heirs legitimate as contra-distinguished from the heirs of liberty and of right, to the throne of this realm — the illegitimate heirs I call them; [125] but the true legitimates of the world, as some are disposed to call them who do not hold that allegiance, at least who disguise that allegiance, to the house of Brunswick, which, as good subjects, we all cherish. Nay, even a prince who, I doubt not, will rank, in point of antiquity and family, even higher than the legitimate Bourbons and Stuarts — I mean his highness the dey of Tunis, received her majesty as if she was respected by all his lighter-coloured brethren in the other parts of the globe. And she was also received, in the same respectful manner, by the representative of the king at Constantinople. So that wherever she has gone, she has met from all ranks, the only persons of authority and note whom she could have had as her vindicators. She was received by all those persons of authority and note, not only not as my learned friend expected to prove, but in the very reverse manner, and as from the evidence I have now described her.

Suffer me now, my lords, to solicit your lordships indulgence, while I look a little more narrowly into the case which was thus opened, and not proved by the attorney-general. The first remark which must strike any one who attends to this discussion, is one which pervades the whole case, and is of no small importance. Is it not remarkable, that such a case, possessed as they are of such witnesses, should have been left so lame and short as they must admit it to be left, when contrasted with their Opening? Was ever a case of criminal conversation brought into court under such favourable auspices? Who are your witnesses? The very two who, of all man and woman kind, must know most of this offence, not only if it were in the daily course of being committed, but if committed at all — I mean, the body servants of the two parties, the valet of the man, and the lady's own waiting maid. Why, in common cases, these are the very witnesses the counsel are panting to have and bring into court. From the form of the action, they can hardly ever venture to bring the man's servant; but if they can get hold of one by good fortune, they consider their case must be proved; and then the only question comes to be as to mitigation of damages — for as to proving the fact, no defendant would hold out. And if you believe any part of their case, it was not from any over caution of the parties — it was [126] not from any great restraint they imposed on themselves, and, knowing that they were watched, that they took care to give the world nothing to see; because, if you believe the evidence, they had flung off all regard to decorum, all trammels of restraint, all ordinary prudence; and had given way to this guilty passion, as if they were still in the hey-day of youthful blood, and as if they were justified by those ties which render its indulgence a virtue rather than a crime. Yet, with all this want of caution — all these exhibitions of want of circumspection — the man's serving man, and the lady's waiting woman have not been able to prove more than these facts which, it is pretended, make out the charge. When I said, however, there was no caution or circumspection, I mis-stated the case. If you believe the evidence — and it is the great circumstance of improbability to which I solicit your attention — if you believe the evidence, there was every caution used by the parties themselves, to insure discovery, which the wishes and ingenuity of their most malignant adversary could have devised to promote his own designs. Observe how every part of the case is subject to this remark; and then I leave to your lordships confidently the inference that must arise from it. You will even find, that just in proportion as the different acts alleged are of a suspicious or of an atrocious nature, in exactly the same proportion do the parties take especial care that there shall be good witnesses, and many of them, in order to prove it. It would be a horrible case, if such features did not belong to it; but such features we have here abundantly; and if the witnesses are to be believed, no mortal ever acted as the Queen is represented to have done. Walking arm and arm is a most light thing; it seldom takes place except in the presence of witnesses, and many of those speaking most accurately respecting it; but sitting together in an attitude of familiar proximity which is somewhat less equivocal, is proved by several witnesses; and those who state it to have been done by the aid of placing the arms round the neck, or behind the back, and which accordingly raises it a step higher — these witnesses show you this happened when the doors were open, in the height of the sun, in a villa where hundreds of persons were walking, and when the house and villa were filled with common workmen. Several salutes were given; [127] and, as this is still higher in the scale, it appears that never was a kiss to pass between these lovers without especial pains being taken, that a third person should be by to tell the story to those who did not see it. One witness is out of the room, while Bergami is about to take his departure on a journey from the Queen, while in Sicily. They wait until he comes in, and then they kiss. When at Terracina Bergami is going to land, the whole party are on deck. The princess and Bergami retire to a cabin, and wait till Majoochi enters, and then the act is perpetrated. Sitting on a gun, or near the mast of the ship, on the knees of the paramour, is an act still higher in the scale of licentiousness — It is only proved scantily by one witness, but of that hereafter — care is taken that it should be perpetrated before eleven persons. But sitting upon a gun with the arms entwined, is such an act as leaves nothing to the imagination, except the granting of the last purposes of desire — This must be done in the presence of all the crew, of all the servants, and all the companions, by day and in the evening. The parties might be alone at night: then it was not done; but, at all other times, it is done before all the passengers and all the crew.

But the case is not left here. As your lordships might easily suppose, with persons so wary against themselves, such firm and useful allies of their accusers, such indispensable proofs of the case against them are not wanting to prove the last favour in the presence of good witnesses; and accordingly, sleeping together is not only said to have taken place habitually and nightly in the presence of all the company and all the passengers on board, but always, by land as well as by sea, did every body see it, that belonged to the party of pilgrims to Jerusalem. Nay, so far is this carried, that Bergami cannot retire into the anti-chamber where the princess is to change her clothes, or for any other purpose, without special care being taken, that the trusty, silent, honest, unintriguing Swiss waiting-maid shall be placed at the door of that anti-room, and told, "You wait here: we have occasion to retire for an hour or two and be naked together;" or at least, she is at liberty to draw what inferences she pleases from the fact.

But, my lords, I wish I could stop here. There are features of peculiar enormity in the other parts of this case; [128] and in proportion as these disgusting scenes are of a nature to annoy every one, however unconcerned in the case, who hears them; to disgust and almost contaminate the mind of every one who is condemned to listen to them — in that proportion is especial care taken that they shall not be done in a corner. The place for them is not chosen in the hidden recesses of those receptacles of abomination which the continent have too many of, under the degraded and vilified name of palaces — the place is not taken in the hidden haunts which lust has degraded to its own purposes — some island where vice concealed itself from the public eye of ancient times — it is not in those palaces, in those Capreæ of old, that the parties chose to commit such abominations; but they do it before witnesses in open day-light, when the sun is at the meridian. And that is not enough: the having them in the public high-ways is not enough: but they must have a courier of their own to witness them, without the veil of any one part of the furniture of a carriage, or of their own dress, to conceal from his eye their disgraceful situation! My lords, I ask your lordships whether vice was ever known before so unwary; whether folly was ever known so extravagant; whether unthinking passion, even in the most youthful period, when the passions swell high, and the blood boils in the veins, was ever known to act so thoughtlessly, so recklessly, so foolishly, as this case compels me to fancy? And when your lordships have put the facts to your minds, let this consideration dwell there, and let it operate as a check, when you come to examine the evidence by which the case is supported.

But all this is nothing. Their kindness to the enemy — their faithfulness to the plot against themselves, would be left short indeed, if it had gone no further than this; for it would then depend upon the good fortune of that adversary in getting hold of that witness; at least it might be questionable, whether the greater part of their precautions for their own ruin might not have been thrown away. Therefore, every one of these witnesses, without any exception, is either dismissed without a cause — for I say the causes are mere flimsinesses personified — or is refused to be taken back, upon his earnest and humble solicitations, when there was every human inducement to restore them to favour. — My lords, this is not all. [129] Knowing what she had done; recollecting; her own contrivances; aware of all these cunning and elaborate devices towards her own undoing; having before her eyes the pictures of all those schemes to render detection inevitable and concealment impossible; reflecting that she had given the last finishing stroke to this conspiracy of her own, by turning off these witnesses causelessly, and putting them into the power of her enemy; knowing that that enemy had taken advantage of her; knowing the witnesses were here to destroy her, and told that if she faced them she was undone; and desired and counselled and implored, again and again, to bethink her well before she ran so enormous a risk — the Queen comes to England, and is here, on this spot, and confronts these witnesses whom she had herself enabled to undo her. Menaced with degradation and divorce, knowing that was not an empty threat that was held out, and seeing; it was about to be accomplished, up to this hour she refuses all endeavours towards a compromise of her honour and her rights; she refuses a magnificent retreat and the opportunity of an unrestrained indulgence in all her criminal propensities, and even a safeguard and protection from the court of England, and a vindication of her honour by the two Houses of parliament. If, my lords, this is the conduct of guilt — if these are the lineaments by which vice is to be traced in the human frame — if these are the symptoms of that worst of all states, dereliction of principle carried to excess, when it almost becomes a mental disease — then I have misread human nature; then I have weakly and groundlessly come to a conclusion — for I have always understood, that guilt was wary, and innocence alone unwary.

Attend now, my lords, I beseech you, with these comments upon the general features of the case, to the sort of evidence by which such a case is attempted to be established. I should exhaust myself, besides fatiguing your lordships, if I were to pause here and make a few of the cogent remarks which offer themselves, upon the connection of that part of the case which I have now gone through, with the part I am coming to. But there are one or two points so material, that I cannot omit all mention of them before I proceed further. I will make one observation, that, if an ordinary case could not be proved by such evidence as I am now to comment upon — if [130] it would require very different proofs in the most common story, if there were no improbabilities such as I have shown — a case such as that I have now described, ought to be proved by the most convincing the most pure and immaculate testimony.

My lords; I do not intend to assert — I have no interest in stating it — that a conspiracy has been formed against the Queen, by those who are the managers of the present proceeding. I say not such a thing. I only will show your lordships, that if there had been such a measure resorted to; that if any persons had been minded to ruin her majesty by such a device, they could not have taken a better course, and probably they would not have taken a different course, from that which I think the case of the prosecution proves them already to have pursued. In any such design, the first thing to be looked to is the agents, who are to make attacks against the domestic peace of an individual, and to produce evidence of misconduct, which never took place. Who are those persons I am fancying to exist — if their existence be conceivable — who are those that they would have recourse to, to make up a story against the victim of their spiteful vengeance? First of all, they would get the servants who have lived in the house. Without them, it is almost impossible to succeed: with them, there is a most brilliant prospect of a triumphant result. Servants who have lived in the family were, in fact, all that could be desired — But, if those servants were foreigners, who were to be well tutored in their part abroad, and had to deliver their story where they were unknown, to be brought to a place to which they might never return all their days, and to speak before a tribunal which knew no more of them than they cared for it — whose threat they had no reason to dread, whose good opinion they were utterly careless of; living in a country to which they did not care two rushes whether they returned or not, and knew they never could return — those were the very identical persons such conspirators would have recourse to. But, there is a choice among foreigners. All foreigners are not made of the same materials; but, if any one country under heaven is marked out more than all the rest as the Officina for such a race, I say that country is the country of Augustus and Borgia. I speak of its perfidies, without imputing them to the country at large; but [131] there in all ages perfidy could be had for money, while there was interest to be satisfied, or spite to be indulged.

I say, my lords, that there are in Italy, as in every where else, most respectable individuals. I have myself the happiness of knowing many Italian gentlemen in whose hands I should think my life or honour as safe as in the hands of any of your lordships. But I speak of those who have not been brought here, when I so pass my opinion of them. Those who have been brought over and produced at your lordships bar, are of a far other description: — "Sunt in illo numero multi boni, docti, pudentes, qui ad hoc judicium deducti non sunt; multi impudentes, illiterati, leves; quos, variis de causis, video concitatos. Varum tamen hoc dico de toto genere Grœcorum; quibus jusjurandum jocus est; testimonium Indus; existimatio vestra tenebrœ laus, merces, gratia, gratulatio proposita est omnis in impudenti mendacio." My lords, persons of this latter description were to be gotten by various means, which the carelessness of the one party, which the wealth and power of the supposed conspirators, placed within their reach. Money, accordingly, has been given, with a liberality unheard of in any other case, even of conspiracy; and where money would not operate, power has been called in to its aid.

Having thus procured their agents — having thus intrusted them — how were they to be marshalled to compass the common design? Uniformity of agreement is above all things necessary in conspiracy. Accordingly, they are taken, one by one, and carefully examined before one and the same person, assisted by the same coadjutors and even by the same clerks — they are moved in bodies along the country, by even the same couriers; and these couriers are not the ordinary runners of the foreign office of the country which shall be nameless, who had some connexion with the spot, but special messengers, whose attention is devoted peculiarly to this department. Many of the persons intended to be used themselves as witnesses, are employed as messengers; which kept the different witnesses in the due recollection of their lesson, and had the effect of encouraging the zeal of these witnesses, by giving them an office, an interest, a concern in the plot that is going on.

Observe, then, my lords, how the drilling goes on. It is not done in a day — [132] nor a week — hardly in a year: but it extends over a long space of time; it is going on for months and years. The Board is sitting at Milan. There they sit at the receipt of perjury; there they carry on their operations — themselves ignorant, no doubt, of its being perjury; but then, so long as it continues, so much the more likely is the gross perjury to take place. The witnesses are paid for their evidence: the tale is propagated by the person receiving the money carrying it to his own neighbourhood; and he becomes the parent of a thousand tales, to be equally paid as they deserve; for one is as false as the other. You mark the care with which it is treated — there is not a witness (I mean an Italian witness) brought to this country, without previously passing through the Milan drill; because, if they had not passed through that drill, there would be a want of union and agreement. So that even the mate of the polacre, Paturzo, who was brought here to be examined on the morning after his arrival, was brought through Milan, and passed his examination before the same persons who had taken the former examinations. Aye, and the captain too, who was examined by the Board, more than a year ago, is carried by the way of Milan, to have a conversation with his old friend there, who, the year before, had examined him to the same story. Here, then, by these means recruited — with this skill marshalled — with all this apparatus and preparation made ready to come to the field where they are to operate, you have the witnesses safely landed in England; and in order that they may be removed from thence suddenly, all in a mass, they are living together while here; then they are carried over to Holland, and afterwards returned here; and finally deposited, a day or two before their well-earned services, and well earned money, I think, require them to appear before your lordships. They are kept together in masses — formerly they lived in separate rooms; it was necessary not to bring them together before; but those of feeble recollection it was necessary afterwards to keep together, for the convenience of mutual communication. There they were, communicating to each other their experiences, animated by the same feelings and hopes, founded on the same motives to the same common cause. But not only this; — according to the parts of the story which they were to make out before your lordships, they were put [133] together. There are two Piedmontese: they did not associate together in this contubernium — for I know of no other name by which to denote the place they occupied — but one of them kept company with the mate and captain of the polacre, because he tells the same story with themselves. It is needless to add, that they are here cooped up, in a state of confinement — here they are, without communicating with any body but themselves, ignorant of every thing that is going on around them, and brought from that prison by these means, in order to tell to your lordships the story which, by such means, has been got up among them.

My lords; I fear I may appear to have undervalued the character of these Italians. Suffer me, then, to fortify myself upon the subject, by saying, that I am not the person who has formed such an estimate of the lowest orders of that country. And perhaps it may be some assistance to your lordships — possibly some relief from the tedium of these comments on the statements of the evidence in support of the bill, if I carry your lordships back to a period of the history of this country, and I shall take care not to do it to any remote period, or to circumstances very dissimilar from those which mark the present day. Your lordships, I perceive, anticipate me. I naturally go back to the reign of Henry the 8th, and the proceedings against Catharine of Arragon. And I shall show your lordships in what way we have a right to view Italian testimony, though proceeding from sources calculated to establish impressions very different from the statements of discarded servants. Your lordships will find in the records of that age, in Rymer's Collection, some curious documents with respect to the proceedings of Harry the 8th. The great object, as your lordships know, was, to procure and consult the opinions — the free, unbiassed opinions — of the Italian jurists, in favour of his divorce. Rymer gives us the opinions of the professors and doctors of several of the Italian universities; and from them your lordships will see that, by a strange coincidence, these Docti gave their "free, unbiassed opinions," in nearly the same words. I shall select that of the most celebrated of the whole, which is known by the appellation of Bologna the Learned. The doctors there say, one and all, that in compliance with the request of the King, they each separately, and unconnected with his [134] fellows, had examined the case; — they had taken the care which your lordships have taken on the present occasion — and then, having well weighed the matter — "Censemus, judicamus, dicimus constantissime testamur, et indubie aftirmamur" — they say, that having sifted the question, they are one and all of opinion, that Harry the 8th has a right to divorce his queen. But it seems that, from the great similarity of the opinions of the doctors, and of the language in which they were expressed, there existed at that time much the same suspicion of a previous drilling, that there does appear to have been in a certain other case which I shall not now mention; and that to repel that suspicion, pretty nearly the same precautions were used as in this other case. Indeed, by a singular coincidence, these Doctissimi Doctores of the sixteenth century, were directed to swear — which they might do with a safe conscience — that they had never opened their mouths to one another on the subject — in the same manner that the illiterati et impudentes of the present proceeding swore, that they had never talked to one another on the subject of what each had to swear. The doctors and divines of Italy swore, on the Holy Gospel, "that they never had, directly or indirectly, communicated their sentence, or any word or thing concerning the same, by sign, word, deed, or hint, until a certain day;" — which was the day they all came to understand the matter.

Now, my lords, all this appeared, prima facie, a very sound and specious case; as every security had been taken to guard against any captious objection; and, with that character it would, probably, have passed down to posterity, if there had been no such thing as a good historian and honest man, in the person of bishop Burnet; and he, with his usual innocence, being a great advocate of Harry the 8th, in consequence of his exertions in support of the Reformation, tells the tale in the way which I am now going to state; still leaning towards that king, but undoubtedly letting out a little that is rather against himself. Harry first provided himself with an able agent; and it was necessary that he should also be a learned one. He took one, then, to whom my learned friend, the solicitor general's eulogium on the head of the Milan commission, would apply in some of the words; — a man of great probity, and singularly skilled in the laws of his country. And, by a still more [135] curious coincidence, the name of Harry's agent happened to be Cooke. "He went up and down," says Burnet, "procuring hands; and he told them he came to, that he desired they would write their conclusions, according to learning and conscience," — [as I hope has been done at Milan] — "without any respect or favour, as they would answer it at the Last Day; and he protested," — [just as I have heard some other persons do] — "that he never gave nor promised any divine any thing, till he had first freely written his mind" and he says, that "what he then gave, was rather an honourable present than a reward;" — as a compensation, not a recompence. These were the very words used in that country, at that time — as they have been, recently, in this.

Now, we have a letter from this agent — as who knows two hundred years hence there may not be letters from Milan? — There is a letter of Cooke's to Henry the eighth, dated the 1st of July, 1530, in which he says, "My fidelity bindeth me to advantage your highness, that all Lutherans be utterly against your highness in this cause, and have told as much, with their wretched power, malice without reason or authority, as they could and might; but I doubt not." says he,"that all Christian Universities" — Christian contradistinguished from Lutheran! — "that all Christian ministers, if they be well handled, will earnestly conclude with your highness. Albeit, gracious lord" — now comes he to expound what he means by the well-handling of the Christian Universities — "albeit, gracious lord, if that I had in time been sufficiently furnished with money; albeit, I have, beside this seal, procured unto your highness 110 subscriptions; yet, it had been nothing, in comparison of that that I might easily and would have done. And herein I inclose a bill specifying by whom and to whom I directed my said letters, in most humble wise beseeching your most royal clemency to ponder my true love and good endeavouring, and not suffer me to be destitute of money, to my undoing, and the utter loss of your most high causes here." Now this, my lords, undoubtedly is the outward history of this transaction; but we have only seen the accounts of Bishop Burnet and of the agent Cooke. But, happily, the Italian agent employed by. Henry the 8th, one Peter à Ghinnuciis, the Vimercati of that day, left his papers behind [136] him, and we are furnished with the original tariff, by which the value of the opinions of these Italian doctors and divines were estimated. "Item, to a Servite friar, when he subscribed, one crown; to a Jew, one crown; to the doctor of the Servites, two crowns; to the observant friars two crowns; Item, to the prior of St. John's and St. Paul's, who wrote for the king's cause, fifteen crowns" — the author was better paid then than the advocate; as often happens in better times — "Item, given to John Maira, for his expense of going to Milan, and for rewarding the doctors there, thirty crowns." There is a letter also from the bishop of Worcester to Cooke, directing, that he should not promise rewards, except to them that lived by them, to the Canonists who did not use to give their opinions without a fee. "The others he might get cheaper" — those he must open his hand to; because, he says, the Canonists, the Civilians, did not use to give an opinion without a fee. Bishop Burnet, with the native simplicity and honesty of his character, sums up all this with remarking, that these Italian doctors "must have had very prostituted consciences, when they could be hired so cheap. It is true, that Cooke, in many of his letters, says, that if he had had money enough, he could get the hands of all the Divines in Italy; for he found the greatest part of them were mercenary."

My lords; the descendants of those Divines and Doctors, I am sorry to say, have rather improved than backslidden from the virtues of their ancestors; and, accordingly, I trust your lordships will permit me to bring the tale down to the present day, to connect the present proceeding with the Divorce of Harry the 8th's time. I trust your lordships will allow me to read to you the testimony, given in the year 1792, of a native of Italy, of distinguished family, who was employed in a diplomatic character, by an august individual, who was near being the victim of an Italian conspiracy — he published a letter, and it is evidence, I say, because it was published before the whole Italian nation in their own tongue, and it states what Italian evidence is made of; and he addressed it, with his name, to the prime minister of the country, that minister enjoying the highest civil and military authority there, and being by descent a subject of the British crown — I mean general Acton. "To the dishonour of [137] human nature," says the writer, "there is nothing at Naples so notorious as the free and public sale of false evidence. Their ordinary tariff is three or four ducats, according to the necessities of those who sell, and the occasions of those who buy it. If, then, you would support a suit, alter a will, or forge a hand-writing, you have only to cast away remorse and open your purse — the shop of perjury is ever open." It poured in upon him in a full tide: he made his appeal in such words as I have now read: he and his royal master, who was implicated in the charge, were acquitted by such an appeal; and I now repeat it, when such evidence is brought to support charges as atrocities, as ruinous, and far more incredible in themselves, than that an Italian should have suborned an agent to injure a fellow creature.

My lords; I have been drawn aside from the observations I was making, generally, of the manner in which this Case has been prepared. I pray your lordships to observe how these witnesses all act after they come into court: and the first thing that must strike an observer here, is the way in which they mend their evidence — how one improves upon the other after an interval of time — and how each improves, when required, upon himself. I can only proceed, my lords, in dealing with this subject of conspiracy and false swearing, by sample: but I will take the one that first strikes me; and I think it will effectually illustrate my proposition. Your lordships must remember the manner in which my learned friend, the attorney-general, opened the case of Mahomet, the dancer. Again, I take his own words: "A man of the most brutal and depraved habits, who at the Villa d'Este exhibited the greatest indecencies at various times, in the presence of her majesty and Bergarni — exhibitions which are too disgusting to be more than alluded to — the most indecent attempts to imitate the sexual intercourse. — This person deserves not the name of a man" — said the attorney-general. Now, my lords, I take this instance, because it shows the proposition that I was stating to your lordships, better than any other, perhaps. All show it, to a degree; but this, best of all; because I have shown your lordships how careful the attorney-general is in opening the Case, and how strong [138] his expressions are; consequently, he felt the importance of this fact; he knew how damaging it would be to the Queen; he knew it was important to state this, and he felt determined not to be disappointed when he had once and again failed — he brought three witnesses; and if one would not swear the first time, he brought him again. Now, my lords, if I show the symptoms of mending and patching in such a case, it operates as volumes against that case; and if your lordships find it here, you may guess it is not wanting elsewhere. But here it is most manifestly to be seen. Your lordships plainly perceived what it was that these witnesses were intended to say. You no sooner heard the first question put — you no sooner heard the leading questions with which the solicitor-general followed it, than you must have known it was expected, that an indecent act would be sworn to — that it would be sworn it was an exhibition of the most gross and indecent description; and one part of the evidence I can hardly recount to your lordships. Now see, my lords, how the first witness swore — this is their first and main witness, who is brought to prove their whole case — Majoochi. He will only allow — and this is the first stage in which this deity of theirs is brought before your lordships — he will only allow it is a dance. "Did you observe any thing else? — the usual answer, "Non mi ricordo; but if there was, "I have not seen it," and "I do not know." "Was any thing done by Mahomet, upon that occasion, with any part of his dress?" says the solicitor-general, evidently talking from what he had seen written down: — "He made use of the linen of his large pantaloons." — "How did he use his trowsers? Did he do any thing with the linen of his pantaloons or trowsers?" "His trowsers were always in the same state as usual." Here, then, was a complete failure — no shadow of proof of those mysteries which this witness was expected to divulge. This was when he was examined on the Tuesday. On the Friday, with the interval of two days — and your lordships, for reasons best known to yourselves, but which must have proceeded from justice guided by wisdom, which is never more seen or evidenced than in varying the course of conduct, and adapting to new circumstances the actions we [139] wish to do — which will not, if it be perfect in its kind, and absolute in its degree, suffer by the deviation; for that reason alone, in order that injustice might not be done (for what, in one case, may be injurious to a defendant, may be expected mainly to assist a defendant in another) — Your lordships, not with a view to injure the Queen — your lordships, with a view to further the ends of justice, allowed the Evidence to be printed, which afforded to the witnesses if they wished it, means to mend and improve upon their evidence — Your lordships allowed this, solely with the intention of gaining for the Queen that unanimous verdict, which the country has pronounced in her favour, by looking at the Case against her — your lordships, however, allowed all the evidence against her to be published, from day to day. Accordingly, about two days intervened between Majoochi's evidence, and the evidence of Birollo; during which time, Birollo had access to Majoochi's deposition, as well as to his person; and it is no little assistance, if we have not only access to the witness, but to his testimony; because he may forget what he has sworn, and it is something that he should see, as well as the second and the mending witness, the story he has told. Accordingly, with the facility which this gave him, came forward Birollo, after two days interval, he improves upon the store; from a dance, and from the usual handling, or ordinary use of the trowsers, he made a rotula or roll. The witness then begins to hint at some indecency; but he does not mention it. He starts and draws back. For my part, I cannot tell what he meant; and he really adds something which he, in his own wicked imagination, might think indecent, but he was forced to admit he did not know what it meant. But, on the Wednesday following, a witness comes, and he finishes it altogether. He improves even upon Birollo; and he tells you, in plain downright terms, that which I have a right to say is, because I know I can prove it to be, false — which I have a right to say, before proving it, was false; because I know the same dance was witnessed by wives and daughters, as modest and pure as any of your lordships have the happiness of possessing — by wives and daughters of your lordships in those countries. [140] Now, another improvement and mending, suffer me, my lords, to advert to; for it runs through the whole case. I do not even stop to offer any comment upon the non mi ricordo of Majoochi; nor on the extraordinary fact of that answer being regularly dropped by the other witnesses, as soon as the impression which the repetition had made on the public mind was fully understood; but I wish to call your lordships attention to the more important point of money. No sooner had Gargiulo the captain, and Paturzo the mate of the polacre, proved that they were brought here by sums so inadequate to the service, by sums so infinitely beyond even the most ample remuneration for their work; that they were bribed by sums such as Italians in their situation never dreamed of — no sooner had this fact dropped out, than one and all of them are turned into disinterested witnesses, not one of whom ever received a shilling by way of compensation for what they did. "Half-a-crown a day for the loss of my time, my travelling expenses, and a few stivers to feed my family!" The expectation of his expenses being paid, began in the instance of the cook, Birollo. He told you, he had nothing at all but his trouble for coming here. "Do you expect nothing I hope to go soon home to find my master." The cook at first was offered and refused money. The others had nothing offered — Demont nothing! — Sacchi nothing! — though true, he, a courier, turns out to be a man of large property, and says, "Thank God! I have always been in easy circumstances" — thank God! with a gratitude truly edifying. A man who must have a servant of his own — who had one in England — who must live here at the expense of four or five hundred pounds a year, which is equal to fourteen or fifteen hundred in Italy, goes to be a courier, is angry at being turned off, and is anxious to return to that situation! I believe the captain and the mate. They avowed that what they had was enormous payment; and the other witnesses, hearing of the effect of that confession, have, one and all, denied having received any thing, and would not confess that they had any future expectations.

The last of these general observations with which I shall trouble your lordships, and which I own I think your lordships [141] must have been impatient I should come to, is with regard to the great blanks among the witnesses for the prosecution — I mean, the fewness of those witnesses, compared with what their own testimony, and their own statement that introduced it, show your lordships they ought to have called. My lords, I conjure you to attend to this circumstance, for it is a most important point in the whole of this case. I say, that if I had not another argument to urge, I should stand confidently upon this ground. If the case were as ordinary as it is extravagant — if it were as probable as it is loaded in every feature with the grossest improbabilities — if it were in the common course of human events, that such occurrences as those which have been alleged should have happened, as it is the very reverse — I should still stand confidently and steadily upon that part of the case to which I have now happily arrived. I know, my lords, that it is bold — I know that it is bold even to rashness — to say so much of any point before I have begun to hint at it; but I feel so perfectly, so intimately convinced, that in such a case as the present, the circumstance to which I refer ought to be fatal to the bill before your lordships, that I consider myself as even acting prudently, in declaring, by anticipation, what I hold to be its character.

My lords; the attorney-general told us, that there were rumours at Naples, why the Queen's ladies left her — it turned out, that instead of leaving her, one had joined her at Naples, one had joined her at Leghorn, and another at Genoa afterwards — but my learned friend said, that one left her, and one or two others staid behind, and rumours were not wanting, that their doing so was owing to the impropriety of her majesty's conduct. Rumours! My learned friend may say, that these were rumours which he was unable to prove. But if they were rumours which had any foundation whatever — if they were such rumours as my learned friend had a right to allude to (even if he had a right to refer to rumour at all, which I deny) — if there was a shadow of foundation for those rumours, why did he not call the obvious witnesses to prove it? Where were those ladies, women of high rank and elevated station in society, well-known in their own country, loved, esteemed, and respected, as women upon whose character not a vestige of imputation has ever rested — women of talents as well as [142] character — the very persons to have brought forward, if he had dared bring them forward; and the very signal, and I had almost said extravagant contrast to all the witnesses, but two, whom my learned friend did venture to call to your lordships' bar? why were they not produced to your lordships? why had not your lordships — why had not we the benefit of having the Case proved against us, in the manner in which any judge sitting at the Old Bailey, would command, upon pain of an acquittal, any prosecutor to prove against any ordinary felon? Certainty, they were in our employment; they were in some way connected with our interest; they received salaries from the Queen, and might be supposed to be amicably disposed towards us. My lords, is there in all that, the shadow of a shade of a reason why they should not have been adduced? I am not speaking, my lords, in a civil action. I am not dealing with a plaintiff's case, in a suit upon a bill of exchange for twenty pounds. I am not even speaking in a case of misdemeanor, or a case of felony, or the highest crime known in the law, between which and the act alleged against my illustrious client it is difficult to draw simply a technical distinction. But I stand here on a bill of Pains and Penalties, which your lordships are not bound to pass; which you may give the go-by to; which you are not bound to say aye, or no, to. Your lordships are not sitting as commissioners to try a case of high treason. Gracious God! is this a case in which the prosecutor is to be allowed to bring forward half a case? Is this an occasion on which the prosecutor is to be allowed to say, "These witnesses I will not call. True it is, they are the best. True it is, that they are respectable; and that they are unimpeachable, no man can deny. If they swear against the Queen, she is utterly undone. But I will not call them. I will leave them for you to call. They are not my witnesses, but yours. You call them. They came from your vicinity. They are not tenants of Cotton-garden, and therefore I dare not, I will not, produce them; but when you call them, we shall see what they state, and if you do not call them" — in the name of justice, what? Say. For shame, in this temple, this highest temple of justice, to have her most sacred rule so profaned, that I am to be condemned in the plenitude of proof, if guilt is — that I [143] am to be condemned unless I run counter to the presumption which rules in all courts or justice, that I am innocent until I am proved guilty; and that my case is to be considered as utterly ruined, unless I call my adversaries witnesses! My lords, my lords, if you mean ever to show the face of those symbols by which Justice is known to your country, without making it stand an eternal condemnation of yourselves, I call upon you instantly to dismiss this case and for this reason; and I will say not another word upon the subject. My lords, perhaps your lordships will allow me a short interval, as I am now coming upon another part of the Case.

[Having retired for three quarters of an hour, Mr. Brougham proceeded as follows:]

My lords; I have humbly to return my thanks to your lordships, for the indulgence with which you have kindly favoured me. I have now to solicit the attention of your lordships, and I am afraid at greater length than any thing could justify but the unparalleled importance of the occasion, to a consideration more in detail of the Evidence by which this Case has been attempted to be supported. And, in point of time, as indeed of importance, the first figure that was presented to your lordships in the group, must naturally have arisen to your recollection the moment I announced my intention of going into any particular detail of the merit of the different witnesses — I mean Theodore Majoochi of happy memory, who will be long known in this country, and every where else, much after the manner in which ancient sages have reached our day, whose names are lost in the celebrity of the little saying by which each is now distinguished by mankind, and in which they were known to have embodied the practical result of their own experience and wisdom; and, as long as those words which he so often used in the practice of that art and skill which he had acquired by long experience and much care — as long as those words shall be known among men, the image of Majoochi, without naming him, will arise to their remembrance. My lords, this person is a witness of great importance; he was the first called, and the latest examined; continuing by the case and accompanying it throughout. His evidence almost extended over the whole of the period through which the Case and the charge [144] itself extends; in fact, only dismissed, or rather retiring from the Queen's service, and refused to be taken back, about the time when the charge closed. He and Demont stand aloof from the rest of the witnesses, and resemble each other in this particular, that they go through the whole case. They are, indeed, the great witnesses to prove it; they are the witnesses for the bill; the others being confirmatory only of them; but, as willing witnesses are wont to do — as those who have received much and been promised more, they were zealous on behalf of their employers, and did not stop short of the two main witnesses, but they each carried the case a great deal further. This is, generally, with a view to their relative importance, the character of all the witnesses.

Now only let me entreat your lordships attention, while I enter on this branch of the subject, a little more in detail. I have often heard it remarked, that the great prevailing feature of Majoochi's evidence — his want of recollection — signifies, in truth, but little; because a man may forget — memories differ. I grant that they do. Memories differ, as well as honesty, in man. I do not deny that. But I think I shall succeed in showing your lordships, that there is a sort of memory that is utterly inconsistent with any degree of honesty in any man, which I can figure to myself. But why do I talk of fancy for I have only to recollect Majoochi; and I know cases, in which I defy the wit of man to conceive stronger or more palpable instances of false swearing, than may be conveyed to the hearers and to the court in the remarkable words "Non mi recordo — I do not remember." I will not detain your lordships, by pointing out cases, where the answer, "I do not remember" would be innocent, where it might be meritorious, where it might be confirmatory of his evidence, and a support to his credit. Neither need I adduce cases where such an answer would I be the reverse of this — where it would be t destructive to his credit, and the utter demolition of his testimony. I will not quote any of those cases. I shall content myself with taking the evidence of Majoochi as it stands: for if I had been lecturing on evidence, I should have said — as the innocent forgetfulness is familiar to every man, so is the guilty forgetfulness; and in giving an instance, I should just have found it all in Majoochi's actual evidence.

[145] Now, at once, to give your lordships proof positive that this man is perjured — proof I shall show to be positive, from his mode of forgetting. In the first place, I beg your lordships attention to the way in which this witness swore hardily in chief, eke as hardily in cross-examination, to the position of the rooms of her Majesty and Bergami. The great object of the attorney-general, as shown by his opening, was that for which the previous concoction of this plan by these witnesses had prepared him; namely, to prove the position of the Queen's and Bergami's rooms always to have been favourable to the commission of adultery, by showing that they were near and had a mutual communication; whereas, the rooms of all the rest of the suite were distant and cut off; and the second part of that statement was just as essential as the first, to make it the foundation of the inference of guilt which ft was meant to support. Accordingly, the first witness, who was to go over their whole case, appears to have been better prepared on this point, than any ten that followed — more inferences — more forgetfulness in detail — perfect recollection to attack the Queen — utter forgetfulness to protect himself from the sifting of a cross-examination. "Where did the Queen and Bergami sleep?" "Her majesty slept in an apartment near that of Bergami." "Were those apartments near, or remote? for it was often so good a thing to get them near and communicating with each other, that it was pressed again and again. "Where were the rest of the suite; were they distant or near?" says the solicitor-general. This was at Naples; and this is a specimen of the rest — for more was made of that proximity at Naples than any where else — "Were they near or distant?" "They were apart." The word in Italian was lontano, which was interpreted "apart." I remarked, however, at the time, that it meant "distant;" and distant it meant, or it meant nothing. Here, then, the witness had sworn distinctly, from his positive recollection, and had staked his credit on the truth of a fact, and also of his recollection of it — upon this fact, whether or not the Queen's room was near Bergami's with a communication? But no less had he put his credit upon this other branch of his statement, essential to the first, in order to make both combined the foundation of a charge of criminal intercourse, "that the rest of the suite were lodged [146] apart and distant." There is an end, then, of innocent forgetfulness, if, when I come to ask, where the rest slept, he either tells me, "I do not know," or "I do not recollect;" because he had known and must have recollected that when he presumed to say to my learned friends, these two rooms were alone near and connected, the others were distant and apart — when he said that, he affirmed his recollection of the proximity of those rooms and the remoteness of the others. He swore that at first, and afterwards said, "I know not," or "I recollect not," and perjured himself as plainly as if he had told your lordships one day that he saw a person, and the next said he never saw him in his life — the one is not a more gross or diametrical contradiction than the other. Trace him, my lords, in his recollection and forgetfulness — observe where he remembers and where he forgets — and you will find the same conclusion following you every where, and forcing the same conviction. I will give one specimen from the evidence itself, to show your lordships he has no lack of memory when it is to suit his purpose — when it is to prove a story where he has learned his lesson and when he is examined in chief — when, in short, he knows who is dealing with him, and is only anxious to carry on the attack — I will show your lordships what his recollection is made of. You shall have a fair sample of his recollection here. I asked him —

The Lord Chancellor — In what page of the printed Minutes, Mr. Brougham?

Mr. Brougham — In page 47, my lord.

The Earl of Liverpool suggested, that the learned gentleman, when he quoted from the printed Minutes of Evidence, should specify the folio.

Mr. Brougham proceeded — I asked him, "Have you ever seen the Villa d'Este since the time you came back from the long voyage? He had been examined in chief upon this, and had stated distinctly, with respect to the Villa d'Este, the state of the rooms, and I wanted to show the accuracy of his recollection on those parts where he was well drilled — "Have you ever seen the Villa d'Este since the time you came back from the long voyage?" "I have." — Was the position of the rooms the same as it had been before with respect to the Queen and Bergami? "They were not in the same situation and before." — Then the witness gives a very minute particular of the alterations — a small corridor was on one side of the [147] princess's room on her return. "Was there a sitting room on the other side of it, not opposite, but on one of the other sides of it?" Now attend, my lords, to the particularity — " There was a small corridor, on the left of which, there was a door that led into the room of the princess, which was only locked; and then going a little further on in the corridor, there was on the left hand a small room, and opposite to this small room there was another door which led into the room where they supped in the evening" — There was this supping-room on the right, there was a door which led into Bergaini's room, and on the same right hand of the same room there was a small alcove, where there was the bed of Bartolomeo Bergami. — " How many doors were there in the small sitting-room where they supped?" — "I saw two doors open always, but there was a third stopped by a picture." — "Where did her royal highness's maid sleep?" "On the other side, in another apartment." — Now, my lords, can any recollection be more minute, more accurate, more perfect in every respect, than Majoochi's recollection is of all these minute details, which he thinks it subservient to his purpose to give distinctly, be they true or be they not — I do not deny them — my case is, that much of what is true is brought forward; but they graft falsehood on it. If an individual were to invent a story entirely; if he were to form it completely of falsehoods, the result would be his inevitable detection; but if he build a structure of falsehood on the foundation of a little truth, he may raise a tale which, with a good deal of drilling, may put an honest man's life, or an illustrious princess's reputation, in jeopardy. If the whole edifice, from top to bottom, should be built on fiction, it was sure to fall; but if it was built on a mixture of facts, it might put any honest man's life or reputation in jeopardy. Now, I only wish your lordships to contrast this accuracy of recollection, upon this subject and upon many other points — a few of which I shall give you specimens of — with his not having the slightest recollection of a whole new wing having been added to the princess's villa. He recollects the slightest alteration of a bed-room or a door; but he has not the slightest recollection of the throwing up a new wing to that house. This memory of his at least [148] is a capricious memory But I will show your lordships that it is a dishonest one also. Of the same nature is his evidence when any calculation of time is required. He observes the most trifling distinction of time when it suits his purpose; and he recollects nothing of time when it is inconvenient for his object. In proof of this, I request your lordships to refer again to the celebrated scene at Naples. There this witness remembers down to minutes, the exact time her majesty passes, upon two occasions, into Bergami's room — upon the first occasion, she remains there from ten to fifteen minutes; on the second, from fifteen to eighteen minutes: that is to say, taking the medium, sixteen and a half minutes, true time. Upon another occasion, he tells you an affair lasted a quarter of an hour. Upon another occasion he fired a gun, and then altogether fifteen minutes elapse — a quarter of an hour there. He is equally accurate about three quarters of an hour in another instance; that is, at Genoa, which I have spoken of before. The other instance was on the voyage. All this was in answer to my learned friend; all this was in the examination in chief all this was thought by the witness essential to his story — all this garnishes the detail of which the story is made up, and gives it that appearance of accuracy which was essential to the witness's purpose. But when I come to ask him the time, and when the answer would be of use to the Queen — when it was of use, not to the prosecution, but to the defence — see how totally he is lost! then he does not know whether they travelled all night, whether they travelled for four hours or eight hours. In answer to a question upon that subject, he says, "I had no watch, I do not know the length of time." No watch! possibly. And did not know the length of time very likely. But had you a watch when you saw the Queen go into the room of Bergami? Did you accidentally know the time when it suited your purpose to know it to a minute? Why know the precise time so accurately on one occasion, and be so totally ignorant of it on another? He pleaded the want of a watch only when it would have suited the purpose of the defence and brought out the truth; or, what comes to the same thing, have convicted himself. With respect to the category of numbers, he cannot tell whether there were two or two and twenty sailors aboard the polacre. [149] He cannot tell with respect to place, that other category of his deposition. Although he slept in the hold, he does not know where the others slept — he cannot tell where they were at night or by day — he knows they were on deck in the day, but he cannot say where they were at night. In short, I ask your lordships, whether a witness with a more convenient memory ever appeared in a court of justice?

But this is not all, my lords. There is much in the evidence of this man, in which the answer, "I do not recollect," or, "I do not know," cannot, by possibility, be true, if the answers given in the examination in chief be true: as, in the first instance which I gave you at Naples; if the minuteness sworn to in his examination in chief was true, and founded in fact, it is impossible that he should have no recollection of the matters to which he was cross-examined. If it was true, that the rooms and doors were as he described them, he could not, by possibility, know and recollect that fact, and be in total ignorance of the other parts of the house. In the same manner, when I examine him respecting Mr. Hughes, a banker's clerk at Bristol, he knows nothing of the name, nothing of his being a banker's clerk, never knew a banker's clerk, has no recollection of him. But when he sees that I have got hold of a letter of his which he knew nothing about at that time, which he perhaps forgot having committed himself by — the moment he sees that, and before I ask him a single word to refresh his memory, you plainly see by his demeanor and the tone of his answer, that he had never forgotten Mr. Hughes, and that he never had forgotten that he was a banker's clerk. "Oh!" he says, "I was in the habit of calling him brother, it was a joke on account of the familiarity in which we were." Thus it appears, that the familiarity makes him forget a man of that kind, although he says that familiarity was the ground of his calling him familiarly and habitually "brother." It was manifest, that Majoochi was not very well pleased to recollect all that passed in that family, he being a married man, and having made a proposal of marriage to a female there, which he attempted to laugh off — with what success, I will leave your lordships to judge. He was not willing to recollect the name, or trade, or connection with that family, until he knew that all was known.

[150] But, my lords, before we have done with Majoochi, we have other instances of that extraordinary instrument, as it has been called, I mean, memory: we have other instances of its caprices. Your lordships recollect the shuffling, prevaricating answers he gave respecting the receipt of money. He first said, he had received money from lord Stewart to carry him to Milan. He afterwards, twice over, swears he never received money at Vienna from any person — then comes the answer, which I can only give in his own words; for none other will give an adequate idea of his style. He says, "I remember to have received no money when I arrived at Milan; I remember I did not: non so;' I do not know: 'più no;' more no than yes: non mi ricordo;' I do not remember."!

Now, my lords, I have a little guess what sort of an evidence this Majoochi gave when he was laying the foundations of that favour which he has since uninterruptedly enjoyed in the counsels of our adversaries. I mean, the attorney and solicitor-general. When he was laying these foundations, deep and wide, upon which his fortune was to be built, your lordships will perceive, that he recollected a great deal which he is now ignorant of. In the opening speech of my learned friend much was stated which this witness was expected to prove, and of which I have before given your lordships an instance or two, and which I will not repeat, further than to remind your lordships, that Majoochi was to have proved the kissing in the room between that of the princess and Bergami at Naples. On the contrary, the witness negatives it in the completest manner, by his saying it was only "whispering," and not kissing. This single instance shows the whole character of this man's testimony; but I will remind your lordships of one or two others, not so striking from the nature of them, but just as fatal to the credit of the witness; because they all show, that he had told one story to the instructors of my learned friends, from which they put their questions, and another to your lordships. When questioned here as to those points, he was staggered for some reason; probably from knowing the facts and documents which had got in my possession, but more probably from having forgotten part of his story. This is just one of [151] the means by which to detect a contrived plot. This partial forgetfulness is much more likely to take place, where the whole is an invention, than where there is truth at the foundation of the testimony. So it is in this case. Majoochi recollects part of his testimony. "Yes," is ready for the question: but parts of it he did not recollect. For it is perfectly evident, that what a person has actually seen is more intensely and firmly impressed on his mind and recollection, than what he has invented and imagined. I am referring, my lords, to the solicitor-general's examination of Majoochi. He is asked, "Did you bring Bergami any broth?" "Often." He then states, that he was ordered to sleep in a cabinet adjoining Bergami's room, and that when there, pretending to be asleep, the princess passed through to the room of Bergami, and then he is asked, "After the princess had entered the bed-room of Bergami, did you hear any conversation?" — that would have been enough; it is not a leading question, but it would have been enough to make the witness recollect; but conversation was not what my learned friend was after — "Did you hear any conversation, or any thing else." That was a hint. The man had said something before, which had been taken down, and was in my learned friend's hand. Now, there was something there which he had said before, and my learned friend wanted to get that out here. If it had been true, why should not he recollect it? But he forgot it. He forgot part of his own invention; a situation to which a certain class of men, that I shall not now mention, are often exposed. So my learned friend, skilfully enough, said, "Did you hear any conversation, or any thing else, pass between them?" "Only some whispers." Now, do your lordships want to know whether my learned friend meant whispering? I say, No. I say, I read as much as if I saw the printed paper which was in his hand. My learned friend, the attorney-general, had opened very differently; but, besides, from the examination of the solicitor-general, it is evident, that more than whispering was expected. If Majoochi had never before said, that something more than whispering had passed between the parties, my learned friend would have been satisfied. But he proceeds to ask him, "Do you recollect having heard or observed any thing when the princess was in Bergami's [152] room the second time?" "Whispering conversation," says he again. — Another instance of the same sort occurs, and I hope it will not be thought too minute to go into it; for it is only in this way that conspiracies are detected. My lords, there was a story told about the princess riding on an ass. "At Genoa, you saw her royal highness riding upon an ass?" "Yes." There was a great deal more in his former statement than he dared say now. "Did you, upon these occasions, make any observations as to any thing that passed between the princess and Bergami?" "Yes." — My learned friend thought he was quite secure there. It is not a thing that happens every day to see a princess of Wales riding about on an ass. "State what passed at the time she was riding on an ass?" "He took her round her waist to put her upon the ass." My learned friend thought he was safe landed. "What else?" "He held her" — Aye, that will do very well — a great deal may be done with the word "holding" — a great deal depends on the tenure — "He held her hand lest her royal highness should fall." Aye, that won't do. My learned friend is not satisfied with that. Indeed, he must have been satisfied easily, if that had contented him. But, having something in his hand which the witness had sworn to before, and convinced it must be brought to his recollection again — not knowing he was trying to do a very difficult thing, namely, to make a false swearer recollect his fiction, but trying, as he thought, to make a true man recollect what he had actually seen — my learned friend proceeded — "Did you make any other observation?" "I have made no other observation — they spoke; they discoursed." And there are a number of anecdotes of the same sort — the breakfast at the Benedictine Convent, and other things, which were equally inventions — with this difference, that, as always happens to men engaged in such a vile concern, they forget parts that are just as specific and clear as the parts they recollect; and which, if they had been true, they would have recollected just as well.

I might remind your lordships, upon this head of Majoochi's evidence, of the incredible nature of his story respecting [153] what took place at Naples. He would have you to believe, my lords, having free access to the bed-room of Bergami, through other rooms, in which no persons slept — which access, he was compelled, after repeated prevarications, much equivocal swearing, and several positive denials, at length to admit, after a very pressing examination — having admitted that there was this secret, easy, safe access to that place of guilt, the bed-room of Bergami, he states, that she preferred the other way, where she knew Majoochi slept, where she saw that he slept in a bed without curtains, in a room so small, that she could not go through without almost touching that bed — in a room in which there was a fire to give light. But, what is the most monstrous thing of all, he tells you, that her majesty, in order to make her detection inevitable, as she passed through the room, went to the bed and looked him in the face, to ascertain whether he was asleep! Now, my lords, this whole story defeats itself, and discredits the teller. You cannot believe it; it carries its own refutation along with it. What! my lords, are you to suppose that her majesty voluntarily passed through a room where she must have been seen if the person was awake, when she knew she might have gone another way, where she would not have been seen? She knew, my lords, that Majoochi slept in that room — she knew the disposition of his bed — she knew that there was a fire kept in the room; — knowing all this, she voluntarily passes through it, stopping in her way to look the witness straight in the face My lords, I say, that this is a plain invention — an invention natural enough to come into the head of a person who lives in a country where nightly robberies are committed. I will not say that this witness is a person who had known more nearly that offence, and the precautions taken by those who commit it; but he, at least, was surrounded by adepts in the art, and we generally find in stories of robbers, that identical particular inserted — the robber comes to the bed of the lady (and if there is a lady concerned, so much the better) and looks with a candle near her face, to ascertain whether she is asleep. If she is asleep, it is all well contrived; but if she is awake, and might give the alarm, he does not care about the alarm, and coolly retires. It is very wise and prudent in the robber to take this precaution. But, for a person who is [154] going to commit adultery in the next room, whose face is as well known to the man in bed as any face that can be mentioned, to go up to his bed-side with a candle, in order to discover whether he is asleep or not, is a proceeding altogether incredible. What, my lords, would not the simple fact of her majesty having been seen in that room, under such circumstances, have exposed her? Would not the fact of being detected in looking in the face of Majoochi, have of itself, condemned her? The tale is most monstrous and incredible. But it is providentially and most happily ordained, for the detection of guilt, and the justification of innocence, that such inventions are often carelessly put together; and, in this instance, in particular, there has been but little caution used in putting the materials together; and this part has been peculiarly thoughtlessly cast.

Now, my lords, I wish, before I dismiss my observations on these stories, I might recall to your lordships attention what this witness has said on another point. He told you, that Bergami began to dine at the table of the princess at Genoa; when it is notorious that he did not begin to dine with her until some months afterwards. I might recall to your lordships attention that, in speaking of the night-scene at Genoa, he does not recollect Vinescati, the courier, arriving: even he says, as the thing is much mixed up with fiction, he had forgotten that, and he did not remember his arrival at all — "Do you remember at any time of the night knocking at the door of Bergami's bed-room, and endeavouring to wake him?" "I do remember." — "Upon what occasion was that? for what purpose?" "It was in the night when Vinescati came, and I went to knock." Then, recollecting the contradiction, he said, it was not the night Vinescati arrived, but the night thieves got into the house, and then he drops the courier altogether.

But, my lords, I come to what happened late in the day. Your lordships recollect the account this witness gave of his leaving the service of her majesty — an account which contains as much gross and deliberate falsehood as ever polluted the walls of a court of justice; and allow me here, my lords, to observe, that where you see one material part of a person's evidence grossly and palpably false, it dispenses with the necessity of going more into detail — it is not necessary to prove [155] him a perjurer throughout — the whole of his evidence must be discredited — nothing that falls from the lips of a perjured man ought to be entertained. My lords, in giving you an account of his leaving the service of the princess, the witness thought necessary, in order to raise his character, I suppose, to flourish about the cause of his quitting her service. He denied that he had been dismissed by her royal highness. He said that he left the service, because he did not like the people by whom she was surrounded. This he said, for the double purpose of raising his own credit, and debasing the Queen's and the society by which she was surrounded. But, my lords, this story is false; and I will show the falsehood from his own mouth. When a question was put to him, "Did you not apply to be taken back?" what was his answer — "I do not recollect." Here, my lords, you see how he defends and protects himself; for if he had answered, No, he knew we might have called a witness who would have convicted him at once. He was then asked, "Did you ever apply to Schiavini to make interest for your being taken back in He answers, "Once I did." Now a man might have recollected that, after being told, and might innocently have forgotten in answer to the first question; but then he would not have immediately recollected all the circumstances; for, the moment that string was touched, his recollection was entire, his forgetfulness quitted him, and he told us the whole history of the matter; and a very material thing it is for your lordships to attend to. He says, "Yes, yes" — Si, si, was his expression; but it was in a sort of joke, just as a person applies "I made the application in joke." That may be so; but if he did not make it in joke, he has perjured himself; if he did make this application in joke, to what follows, he must have answered, No. "Did you or did you not make repeated applications to Hieronimus also to be taken back into her royal highness's service "This could not be all a joke; you could not have joked with several persons on the same string. "Non mi recordo" — "this I do not remember." Now, I say, my lords, that either this last "Non mi recordo" is gross and wilful perjury, or the first story is gross and wilful perjury, that he left the Queen from his horrors of the bad people by whom she was surrounded, or that he made his application to Schiavini in pure [156] joke. There is no way out of this dilemma. The two stories are utterly inconsistent. But your lordships recollect the way in which he told you that he never wished to go back to his service. It was done with some flourish and figure. He said, with some indignation, "Rather than go to serve her royal highness, on account of the persons that are about her, I will go and eat grass." I ask your lordships, is that the saying of a true or a false man, when he pretends that he would rather eat grass than go back to a house, where he made one application which he pretends to have been a joke, and afterwards will not swear he did not make several applications to get back to the same bad house? My lords, here, I say, is developed the mystery of Majoochi and his non mi recordo. My lords, this was his protection and his shelter. My lords, I say that rank falsehood appears on the face of this part of the evidence, take it one way or the other; and I care not which of the two branches of the alternative is taken.

My lords; I now wish to call the attention of your lordships, for a moment, to the next witnesses; but it shall only be for a moment; because I have already anticipated, in part, what I had to say of them — I mean those well-paid swearers, the captain and the mate of the polacre. Now first, as to the mate, there is something in the demeanor of a witness more consonant to a candid and a true story, than the pertness with which that person answered several questions; and all those who have been accustomed to see witnesses in a court of justice know, that those who are stating falsehoods are extremely apt to give flippant and impertinent answers. The mate of the polacre is precisely a witness of this kind. Upon being asked, "Was the little gun you spoke of upon the deck?" he answers, "On the deck, we could not carry it in our pocket." I only mention this, because my learned friend, the solicitor-general has said, that he is a witness of great credit. Again, when asked, "How did you travel from Naples to Milan?" he answers, "In a carriage; I could not go on foot." I only do this to remind your lordships of the manner of the witness, which I should not do, if he had not been said to be a witness of the most perfectly correct demeanor on the present occasion. — But I [157] proceed to the substance of his evidence — I will venture to say, that a better paid witness — a better paid Italian — for any work or labour, has never yet come to our knowledge. He is paid at the rate of £2,000 sterling a year — he was the mate in that voyage of a trading vessel in the Mediterranean — he is now the fourth part owner of a vessel, upon his own account. So that to give him a sum in proportion to what he makes when at home — to make it a compensation instead of a reward — that, vessel must earn L.8,000 a year; which is somewhat above an income of from sixteen to eighteen thousand pounds in this country. There is not a ship-owner in all Messina, that makes half the money by all the ships he has of his own proper goods and chattels. In that country, a man of two or three or four hundred pounds a year is a rich man. Fifteen hundred pounds a year is a property possessed by none, except the great noblesse. Clear profits of L 8000 a year there — their names would resound over all Italy as the rich of the earth; and not a man of consequence would have gone from this country to that, who would not have tried to procure letters of recommendation to them. The Cobbler has lived in history, but in his time he was not so well known, as these two paltry shippers would be, if, instead of dealing out the instrument he did, these men kept their palaces and spent their four thousand a year. And this is his story; and if he does not mean so much as this, so much the better in another way.

My lords; the Captain of the vessel, as might be expected, is paid in a much higher way than the mate. He is paid £2,400 a year: he is fed, lodged,
and maintained; every expense is paid, and this put into his pocket, and not for the loss of and profits. I have hitherto been considering it as a compensation for the loss of his profits. But his ship is not here; to use the mate's own mode of speech, he did not bring it here in his pocket; though the owner comes to England, the ship is employed in the Mediterranean; and he is paid this — though he attempts to deny it — he is paid this as a recompense and not as a compensation. My lords, the same arguments apply to the Captain, in a greater degree, and I shall not go through them. But, it appears there was a cause of quarrel between the captain and the princess of Wales. [158] He tells you, with some naiveté, that what he had for himself, his mate, and the other twenty men of his crew, and for all his trouble, was a sum considerably less, about a fourth part less, than he receives now, for coming over to swear in this business against his antient freighter. But your lordships recollect what he added to that. He says, "When we take on board royal personages, we trust more to the uncertain than to the certain profits." This is a great truth, well known to many present, that something certain is often stipulated for, but that something more is often given by way of honorary and voluntary compensation. Then, my lords, I only stop here for one moment, to remind your lordships, that according to this, his expectation is not limited to what he gets, namely, £2,400 a year, for coming here to swear against the Queen — but he says, he has been employed by a royal person; and he tells your lordships, that the ascertained compensation bore no proportion to the voluntary reward which he expected from her majesty — how much less, then, has he a right to limit the bounty of her illustrious husband, or of the servants of his majesty, who had brought him here — if he serves them faithfully — if the case in his hands comes right through, and no accident happens If he should succeed in all this, he would then get what would make a mere joke of the £2,400 a year; though that would be infinitely greater than any shipper ever earned by the employment of his vessel in the Mediterranean Seas.

But, my lords, independent of the hope of reward, there is another inducement operating on the mind of this witness from another quarter. Is there no spite to gratify? The whole of his testimony, my lords, is bottomed on revenge. I have a right to say this, because he has told me so himself. He has distinctly sworn, that he had a quarrel with Bergami, the Queen's chamberlain, whose business it was to pay him the money; and that he complained to his own ambassador, that Bergami had kept back from him £1,300 which he claimed. What happened then? "I have made some application, some demand. When I came here last year, I gave a memorial to my ambassador, count de Ludolph, and I stated, that as I believed myself to have served the British government, because I had had the honour of bearing the English flag, I expected the present which I had [159] not received; and on account of this memorial which I gave to count de Ludolph, the English government have known me to be Vincenzo Gargiulo of Naples." Now, I mention it as a circumstance which may strike different minds in different ways, but as not immaterial in any view of this case, that the only knowledge the prosecutor of this case has of this witness is, that he made a complaint against the Queen and her chamberlain, for not having paid him £1,300 that he said, they owed him; and he adds, that he was advised to go to London to see after that sum of money. I warrant you, my lords, he does not think he is less likely to see his way clearly in the pursuit of his claim, in consequence of the evidence which he has given at your lordships bar.

My lords; there are other matters in the evidence of these two men which deserve the attention of your lordships. I think, my lords, that a princess of Wales, on board a vessel, sitting upon a gun, with her arms intertwined with those of her menial servant, and sometimes kissing that servant, is a circumstance not of such ordinary occurrance in the Mediterranean, as to make it likely, that the captain or mate would forget the most important particulars of it. Yet they do forget, or at least they differ — for I will not allow they forget — they differ most materially in their history of this matter. The mate says, that the Queen and Bergami were sitting on a gun, and that they were supporting each other. In the same page, he says afterwards, they were sitting near the main-mast, the princess sitting on Bergami's lap. Now, the difference between sitting on a gun and near the main mast may strike your lordships as not important. I state it, because the mate considers it of importance — therefore, I conceive he has some motives for it; he means to say, I place my accuracy on these details, which I give at my peril. Accordingly he says, that when he saw the Queen on Bergami's knees, it was not on a gun, but on a bench near the mainmast; and not one word about kissing do I see in the mate's evidence. He forgets the most important part of the whole. For which reason, your lordships will conclude with me, I think, that he does not confirm the captain. The [160] captain swears differently. He says, "I have seen Bergami sitting on a gun, and the princess sitting on his knees, and that they were kissing." But do they speak of the same thing? Yes, if they are to be believed at all; for the captain says immediately after, that the mate saw it as well as himself. The mate, however, never says he saw it; and my learned friends did not dare to ask him if he had ever seen it. The captain says, they saw it together; yet when the men are brought to give their evidence — and they are brought immediately one after the other — you see the consequence. They totally differ in their account of the story, and differ in a way clearly to show, that that story cannot be true. Now, what think you, my lords, of this man's desiring you to believe — of his expecting you to believe — that he was a man of that strictness of conduct, and his mate so pure a youth, educated in that primitive, ante-diluvian Garden of Eden, Naples, and Messina; — that, when he saw a lady go near a man, not touching, observe, but leaning over the place where he was reclined — nothing indecorous, nothing improper, nothing even light — but only leaning towards the place where he was reclining — he immediately desired his mate to go away, because, besides being his mate, and therefore under his especial care in point of morals, by the relation of master and mate — he was also his distant relation, and therefore, by the ties of blood also, he had upon his conscience a responsibility for the purity of the sights which should pass before that mate's eyes, and therefore he could not allow him to remain for a moment near that part of the ship, where these two were, because they appeared to be approaching towards each other. Perhaps there may be those who believe all this — who think it a likely account of the matter. Observe, my lords, he never says, that the Queen ordered them to go away — that any order to that effect came from Bergami. No. The guilty pair never interfered — they were anxious that all the crew should see them — but the virtuous Gargiulo, reviving in the modern Mediterranean a system of morals far more pure than ever antient Ocean saw, would not suffer his mate to see that which might happen, when two persons, male and female, did not touch, but were only near each other My [161] lords; there may be those who believe all this — I cannot answer for men's belief — but this I am sure, that if they do not believe it, they must believe another thing; namely, that Gargiulo the captain, and the mate Paturzo speak that which is not true. There is no way out of this conclusion. Either you must believe that the captain speaks the truth, when he gives this account of his motives, or you must believe that it is false, and that; it is gratuitously false. But not gratuitous, as it respects his own character. He means to set himself up by it; to earn his money the better, and, if possible, to take in some credulous minds by it. Perhaps he may have succeeded — the event will show — in making greater that uncertain gain, the rate of which a man, when dealing with royalty, always increases, and in improving his chance of attaining the £1,300 for which he has come over to this country.

My lords; one more statement of these men, and I have done with them. See, my lords, how well drilled they are I hold them up as models for those who may practise that art. I hold them up as highly finished specimens of it in its perfection. And no wonder. They are well drilled — they are the best paid — and therefore they ought to be the crack specimens of that art. Much money had been laid out upon them, and their zeal has been in proportion to the much they have received, and the more they expect. See, my lords, how well they have been trained But, happily, there are limits to this art, as there are to all human inventions. If there were not, God pity those who are attacked — God pity the innocent against whom this mighty art may be directed They cannot perfectly get over the disadvantage of not having access to hear the evidence of each other; but see, when art can do it, how well it is done. The master and the mate are evidently descendants, lineal descendants, of the doctors of Bologna. Whether their names are the same or similar, like those of Harry the 8th's agent, I know not. I have not before me the hundred and ten names; but that they are their lineal descendants, no man can doubt. They are afraid to have it thought, for an instant, that they ever spoke to one another upon the subject of their evidence. Intimate in all other respects — living together in the Magazine of Evidence in this [162] neighbourhood — sleeping in the same room, supping together, breakfasting together the very morning before they came here, again together the day after the first had been examined, and when the second was to come — the only subject on which they never calked, in all the intimacy of master and mate and blood and connexion, and entertaining an affection for each other that would do honour to the nearest connexion, and which I wish some of the nearest connexions had — the only subject, I say, upon which they never chose to enter, is the subject of the inquiry which now occupies all other men.

My lords; this is not peculiar to these two witnesses, but the way in which they tell it is peculiar; and is not marked, on the part of the gallant captain, by the judgment and skill which usually distinguishes him. "I am not a person," says he with indignation, "to state what I am obliged to say in this room — the subject is of such a nature that it cannot be talked of. What subject? — there is nothing so frightful in this subject which you came to support, and which you have witnessed. "No, no: but it would not be decent, it would not be creditable that I should tell to others all those things which we say in this House, before these gentlemen, these lords." "Did you ever say any thing to the mate upon it?" "Oh, never, never" "Did you tell Paturzo last night, or this morning, that it would not be fit for you and Paturzo to talk about his examination of Yesterday?" "Yes, upon this matter."

My lords; this brings me to say a word or two relative to a circumstance in the character of all these recruits of the Cotton Garden Dépôt. I must say, I think, that whatever injury this inquiry may do to the highest and most illustrious persons — however pregnant it be with every thing offensive to morals and to good taste — whatever mischiefs to the conduct of social life may arise, for some time to come, in consequence of the disgusting details brought forth in the course of this ill-omened proceeding, it must be matter of comfort, that there is one spot on the face of the island, one little land of Goshen, sacred from the squabbles which surround it, and that in this retired and pure society, those subjects which offend the delicate, which alarm the apprehensions of morality, and which go so well nigh to [163] contaminate the morals of all classes of the community elsewhere, never, by any mischance, reach; and, strange to tell, my lords, that one little spot is neither more nor less than Cotton Garden, in the vicinity of this House! Let no man, then, suppose, that the danger is so great as it has been represented; or that there is any accuracy in the statement, or that there is any ground for the alarm founded upon it, that the whole island is flooded with the indecencies and impurities which issued forth from the Green Bag; for there is at least Cotton Garden, where the most strictly modest matron may go, without feeling, that if she carries thither the most chaste virgin, that virgin's face will ever there be suffused with a blush; for in that place, and amongst the witnesses themselves — amongst the agents of this plot — amongst the contrivers of it there — amongst those who appear before your lordships to give utterance to the abominations of their own fancy — amongst them, it turns out, that there is never one whisper heard on any thing even remotely connected with the subject which so much vitiates the mind and debases, I will say, the reputation of this country every where else! My lords, if your lordships chose to believe this, far be it from me to interrupt an illusion so pleasing, even by calling it such; for it is delightful to have any such spot for the mind to repose upon. If your lordships can believe it, do so in God's name! But if you do not believe it, I say, as I said before, you must believe something else — if you do not believe it, you must believe, that all the witnesses who have said so, and they are all those who are in that dépôt, are perjured again and again.

My lords; the course of my observations has now brought me to personages of still greater importance in this case, than either the captain or the mate, although my learned friend, the solicitor-general, has stated them to be witnesses of infinite importance — I mean Demont and Sacchi; whom I trust I shall be excused for coupling together, united, as they appear to be, between themselves by the closest ties of friendship, resembling each other, as they do, in all the material particulars of their history, as connected at least with the present story; both living under the roof of the Queen and enjoying her bounty and protection; both reluctantly dismissed; both soliciting to be taken back into place and favour — connected [164] together since, by the same ties, living together in great intimacy, both in the native mountains of Switzerland, and afterwards upon their arrival in this country; remaining in this country about the same period of time, and that above twelve months; employing themselves during those twelve months in the way best adapted to fit them for the business in which they were to be employed, by obtaining access to our best classic writers, and attaining a knowledge of our language, though they modestly brag not of their proficiency in this respect, but choose to avail themselves of the assistance of an interpreter, which has this advantage, that it gives them the opportunity of preparing an answer to the question which they understand, while the interpreter is furnishing them with a needless translation.

My lords; the other points of resemblance are so many, that I shall not detail them; for your lordships will see them when I come to enter into the particulars of their evidence. But I wish, in the first place, to remind your lordships what sort of a person Mademoiselle Demont describes herself to be; because it signifies very little what we shall be able to show her to be. I had rather take her own account of herself. I cannot wish for more; and I am sure she could give us no less, with any ordinary regard to her own safety; for as to desire of truth, I say nothing upon this occasion. She is a person of a romantic disposition, naturally implanted in her mind, and which has been much improved by her intercourse with the world. She is an enemy to marriage, as she says in her letters. She does not like mankind in the abstract — "potius arnica omnibus quamlibet inimica" I think we may say, from some things which came out afterwards — mankind in the abstract she rather objects to; but she makes an exception in favour of such a near friend as Sacchi, whom she dignifies by the title of an Italian gentleman; though he, ungrateful man, to justify her dislike of mankind, will not return the compliment, by acknowledging her to be a countess! But this Italian gentleman, whom she will not acknowledge to be a servant, came over with her. Marriage, she says, she does not like. She loves sweet liberty; and in the pursuit of this "mountain nymph" over her native hills and in this country, your lordships see the sort of company in which it lands her; namely, that of Mr. [165] Sacchi, not to mention Krouse the messenger, who goes over to fetch her, and brings the reluctant fair to appear as a witness upon the present occasion.

But far be it from me, my lords, to deny the accomplishments of this person. By no means. She is the most perfect specimen — she is the most finished model — of the complete waiting-maid, that I believe the world has ever seen actually existing. I believe none of the writers of her own country, or of ours, that she is now studying, will give a more complete specimen — neither Moliere, nor Le Sage, nor our own Congreve or Cibber — than that which she has given, without any assistance, in this House. I cannot deny her the greatest readiness — that she is at no loss in writing I cannot deny — that she is not at all sterile in her descriptions upon those subjects on which she enters, until she is brought into contrast with her own letters, and until my learned friend Mr. Williams begins his cross-examination. I cannot deny that she possesses a caution which would do honour to a Machiavel of a waiting-maid; that she is gifted with great circumspection; that she possesses infinite readiness at devising excuses and adjusting one part of her evidence with another; that they were well formed and well devised, and that if the thing could have been done — which it cannot by the eternal laws of truth — she would have succeeded in blinding and deluding her hearers. She showed great art in endeavouring to reconcile the stories she had told, with the contents of the letters which were produced; which letters she had not forgotten, though she did not know that they were still in existence and ready to be produced against her. Had she been aware of their preservation, and had her patrons been aware of their contents, your lordships would never have seen her face here; as you have not seen the faces of seventy other witnesses, whom they dare not call, and whom they have shipped off, like so much meat, or live lumber, for their native country. Far be it from me, my lords, to deny the accomplishments of this person! Nor do I deny that she is a great adept at intrigue; which, indeed, she piques herself upon. She would never forgive me if I denied her that merit. Her constant practice is, to deal in double entendres: Sacchi does the same. She in her letters to her sister; and he in his conversation with Mr. Marrietti. So that it is impossible to know [166] what they mean. In short, to them may be applied what was said of old of a whole people — "tribuo illis literas de multarum artium disciplinam, non adimo scrmonis leporem, ingeniorum acumen, dicendi capiam; denique eliam, si qua sibi alia sumunt non repuguo; testimoniroum religionem et fidem nunquam ista natio coluit; totiusque hujusce rei quœsit vis, quœauctoritas, quod pondus ignorant." I hear her candour praised by some persons — and why? Because she admits she was turned off for a story which proved to be false. I hear her praised too for her other admissions; and what were those? When she was asked, if she was sincere in such and such praises which she bestowed upon her majesty, she said, in some of them she was, but not in all — in a part she was, but not in the whole. "Were you in want of money?" "Never." — "Did you never write to your sister 'I am in want of money?'" "It may be so; but if I did so, it was not true." — So there is no connexion in rerum naturâ, in this person's case, between the thing being true and her saying it, nor any opposition in this person's mind, in a thing being downright falsehood, and her saying and writing it. Truly, this is her own account of herself; and yet, to my no small astonishment, I have heard her praised for the candour with which she gave this account, by persons of moderate capacity.

My lords; I need hardly remind your lordships — I need hardly remind any person whose capacity is above the meanest — I need hardly tell any man who is not fit to be turned out in the fields among those animals whom he sometimes abuses by using — I need hardly say to any one, See what is the effect of this! Will it be said — be it — that she uses double entendres, that she tells falsehoods freely to gain her own ends; yet, that the candour of making these admissions, the ingenuousness of youth with which she tells you that she tells falsehoods by wholesale, so that she cannot be depended upon for a word that she utters, is a blandishment more seductive than all her personal charms, that it binds us to her, though not her personal lovers, and that we open our ears to all her tales because she is so engaging a liar, and acknowledges, with so much readiness, that there is not a word of truth in her late story? My lords, in any body but a witness you maybe pleased with such candour — in any one except one whose whole credit depends upon the [167] truth of her story. You may say, "Poor, dear, innocent Swiss Shepherdess, how ingenuous thy mind!" but as to a witness, I never before heard so strange a reason for giving credit, as to cite the candour with which she admitted that she was not to be believed.

My lords; look at her letters — look at her explanations of them. I will not go through them in detail; but I will tell you — and the more you look at them the more you will be convinced of this truth, that her explanations of them are impossible — that the double entendres do not fit — that the explanations she gives do not tally with what appears in black and white. Her gloss does not suit her text: they are totally inconsistent; and the clear contents of the four corners of the document show that what she stated is untrue. The letters want nothing to make them perfectly intelligible. Her key does not fit her cipher. The matter only becomes doubtful as she envelopes it in falsehood, by the inventions of the moment, by her extempore endeavours to get rid of the indisputable meaning of her own hand-writing. My lords, a plain man knows how to deal with these things. He does not entangle himself in the miserable webs which this dirty working creature attempts to throw around him: he goes straight on, if he be a wise and an honest man, to see justice done to the object of a perjured conspiracy: he goes straight through, and believes those, and those only, who show themselves to be worthy of credit; and I pray to God, that your lordships may so believe, and not stand an exception, a solitary exception, to the conviction of all the rest of mankind! I hope your lordships will believe this woman to have been sincere, when she says that the Queen was good and innocent — that at that time she spoke the language of her heart in the eloquence of her feelings, and only has since been corrupted, when having been refused to be taken back into that service where she had never received aught but favour and kindness, she fell into the hands of the other conspirators against the honour of her illustrious mistress.

I forgot, my lords, in admitting the qualities of this female, to make another concession. She is kindly attached to her own sister. She loves her with a sincere affection. She tells you so. Her principle in her conduct upon this occasion, if she is believed, was anxiety for her [168] service and interest. Now, I do not believe the story which follows: and it is not I who am calumniating Demont, because I am taking her own account of herself, which I do not believe. Mine is a plain story. She represents herself as affectionate towards that sister, heartily attached to her interest, only anxious to promote it — her sister just coming into the world at the innocent age of fifteen — and that she does all she can to obtain a place for that sister in a house which, if you believe a tittle of what she told you, ought to have the name, not of a palace, as the Attorney General says, but of a brothel. She has two sisters, indeed; she is equally attached to both; she describes the letter as written immediately after leaving those scenes, immediately after having been unwillingly turned out of this brothel — unwilling to leave it, she says, she was, although she admits that (differing from her sisters in that respect), she was rich and they were poor. She was under no necessity of submitting to that contamination, to which no necessity ought to induce an honest woman to bend. But though she was under no necessity, the honest Swiss chamber-maid balances the profits of her place against its disgrace; acting upon the principle of the Roman emperor, who, so that he raised a tax, was not over anxious as to the materials from which the filthy imposition was obtained. Though she admits that the house is worse than an ordinary brothel, and loves her sisters, the elder as well as the younger, she is occupied for six months after she leaves it; first, in endeavouring, as I told jour lordships, to obtain for the virgin of fifteen a place, to initiate her there; and next, to keep the maturer girl of seventeen in possession of so comfortable and so creditable a situation. Such is Demont by her own account! I do not believe her so bad — I believe no woman so bad, as she now finds it necessary to tell you she is, because, unexpectedly, we bring out her own hand-writing against her. I believe every word of her letter to be sincere. I believe she did right and well in wishing to retain her own place, to keep one sister there, and to obtain employment for another; but I also believe, that having been driven thence, and disappointed in her hopes of being taken back, she invented the story she has now told, not knowing that these letters were in existence, and would be brought in evidence against [169] her. But she was sworn in Lincoln's-Inn Fields, before she knew of these letters being in existence. Had she known of this fact; I have no doubt she would rather have forgone all the advantages she has reaped, for coming forward as a leading witness in the plot against the Queen, than have made her appearance at your lordships bar.

So much for this lady. I now come to that amiable gentleman M. Sacchi. And I observe, my lords, with great satisfaction, a most pleasing symptom of liberality in the present times, as exhibited in the liberal reception which this witness has met with among your lordships, and in the pains which have been taken, both by those who produced him, and those who afterwards examined him, to increase the estimation in which it was wished that he should be held. It shows, my lords, how the age is improving. It shows how vulgar prejudices against Buonaparté and the French wearing away. I well remember the time when nobody would have been very well pleased to bring forward, as a principal witness in a case of any kind, a man whose recommendation was, that he had been a soldier of Buonaparté, that he had served in any of his campaigns, and had been promoted by that Corsican adventurer — that usurper — that revolutionary chief — as it was the fashion to call him. Nevertheless, now that a witness against the Queen has this merit to boast of, it is brought forward, as if we had never heard any thing — as if we had never been sickened by whole volumes of abuse which had been poured forth, for the purpose of showing, that the very name of a French hussar, particularly if be happened to be a servant of Buonaparté, was just the name for every thing most profligate and abandoned. Now, my lords, without having ever been one of those who approved of the excess to which this abuse was carried on the part of ourselves and of our neighbours, I nevertheless cannot help thinking, that a cast-off servant, a courier who pretends to be a gentleman and now has his servant to wait upon him, and who says "Thank God, I was always in easy circumstances," though he was once living on the wages of a common courier — who can only say, that he was a common soldier in the French army, and was refused a commission in the Swiss army but was offered the place of a Serjeant — would, a few years ago, have stood very little chance of [170] mending his credit by this last adjunct. But, my lords, this is my least objection to Sacchi. I must be allowed to say, that the fact, that such men may have bravery enough to induce their masters to give them a pair of colours, is not the best positive proof of their being the most sincere and the most scrupulous of mankind. But look, my lords, at the account you have of him from himself. He too deals in double entendres. He has gone by three whole names and a diminutive; two of them we know, and the third we do not know; but by three names and a half has he gone. When he came to this country he began his double entendres as soon as he came in contact with his beloved Demont. He told two double entendres — if I may use four syllables instead of the short Saxon word. For if men will do this frequently and continually — if they will do it for a great object, they nation are get into the habit of doing it for no object, but mere sport and playfulness. He tells first this double entendre — "that he had come in the service of a Spanish family." Then he tells another — that "he had a law-suit." We have never heard what that was, nor any thing more about it — that he came over in consequence of "a law-suit, a process with her royal highness." How, then, did he get into the situation in which he is now living with his own servant, seeing that he was so sorry at being turned away from the service of the Queen, where he was first employed at the lowest wages of a courier, and afterwards as a poor equerry? My lords, you must believe that he has got money nobody knows whence; or you must disbelieve the story altogether.

But, my lords, there is another similarity between Sacchi and Demont. He is asked, "How much money had you in your name at your banker's at Lausanne?" He answers — "Fifty Louis." "Will you swear you had not more than that at one time at that banker's?" — "I had no more than those fifty Louis." "Will you swear you never had a credit which empowered you to draw upon that banker for a larger sum than this?" — "I never had." "Have you never represented that you had a larger sum or a greater credit?" — "I do not remember to have said." Suppose any of your lordships were asked to speak to a fact, and you say — "positively not," — "most certainly not," — "I know it is not so," — [171] nobody would dare to put the next question to you — at least I know very few of your lordships to whom they would dare to put it — "did you ever say so?" It could only be put to any one of your lordships in joke, or in consequence of the greatest familiarity subsisting between the parties. For you had answered that question before. If you are a man to be believed upon your oath, have you not answered the question, whether you ever told any person you had more at your banker's, by saying you know you had no more at our banker's? If you had no more at your banker's, you never could have said so; for if you had, you would have been guilty of a double entendre. But not so with Sacchi, or whatever his names, great or small, may be — "I may have done so — I cannot swear when I am in doubt." The same as to his letters. He was asked, "Did you ever represent to any person, after you had left the service of her royal highness, that you were in a destitute condition?" — "Never." "Did you ever intreat any person of her royal highness's household to have compassion on your dreadful situation, after you had left her royal highness?" — "I have never been in a dreadful situation." "Did you ever represent" — there I was stopped — "Did you ever say" — but he had heard all the argument about representing — "Did you ever say to any person that your conduct towards her royal highness was liable to the charge of ingratitude with respect to a generous benefactor?" — "Never" "Will you swear that you never intreated any one of the suite of her royal highness, after you had left her service, to take compassion on your situation?" — "It may be." "Is that your handwriting? — a letter being put into his hands — "It is." "Is that your hand-writing?" — another letter being put into his hands — "It is." Now, in these letters he has taxed himself with ingratitude in the plainest words. Luckily, he had forgotten those letters. Would any of your lordships shelter yourselves under such a despicable pretext as to say, "Oh! I did not say it?" I wrote it?" Litera scripta — Your lordships shall see the Letters.

But your lordships will recollect what passed afterwards; for I now come to a [172] providential accident — if I may use such contradictory terms, in compliance with the common understanding of them; I now come to an accident, but which I call a providence in favour of innocence — which is always the care of Providence. Sacchi was asked by my learned friend the attorney-general, "You have stated, that when you came to this country, you assumed the name of Milani, what was the reason why you assumed that name?" To which he answered, "I took this name on account of the tumult (tumulto) which had taken place, and of the danger I should have run if I had come under my name, knowing that I should have been known." — "When was it that you assumed the name by which you now go?" It was immediately after the affair that happened at Dover." Now, luckily, he had forgotten the date; happily, he did not recollect, that he came over to this country in July in the year 1819, and that the tumult at Dover happened in July 1820. These, my lords, are those providential circumstances by which conspiracies are detected; and but for which, every one of your lordships may be their victims to-morrow. Now, I call upon your lordships to see how the witness gets out of this. After a short interval in the examination, your lordships will find in page 459 of the printed Minutes, that which I will read for the sake of connection; and I do it the more freely, because it is the last quotation with which I shall trouble your lordships from this evidence. In answer to a question put to him by the attorney-general, Sacchi says, "I took this name on account of the tumult which had taken place, and of the danger which I should have run if I had come under my own name, knowing that I should have been known." "When did you assume the name by which you now go? "Then he instantly recollects, "It was immediately after the affair that happened at Dover." The name he now goes by, he assumed since the affair at Dover; the name of Milani he assumed a year before at Paris. My learned friend, the attorney-general, leaves him there — reasoning, from his knowledge of these matters, that he would only make had worse. But one of your lordships took it up; and if there ever was a specimen of shifting and beating about the bush, to shelter a mortal from an unlucky scrape [173] arising out of a false tale, here you have it. The manner in which it was said — the confusion — the embarrassment — the perplexity — I cannot represent. I trust your lordships remember it. But enough remains upon the record, and by that I should be willing to rest the credit of Sacchi as a witness. "Had you ever gone by the name of Milani before you came to England?" "I took this name in Paris." — "At what time, in what year, did you take that name in Paris?" "Four or five days before I set out for England." — "When was that?" "In the month of July last year." — "What was your motive for taking that name at that time in Paris?" "As I knew that I was known in London by my own name, I endeavoured to shelter myself against any inconvenience that might happen to me." Not a word about what had happened to others! "What tumult had happened at that time that induced you to take that name?" — there is no more getting him out of the potential mood into the past tense, than there is of getting him out of knavery into honesty — "What tumult had happened at that time that induced you to take that name?" "I was warned that the witnesses against the Queen might run some risk if they were known" — forgetting, or wishing to slur over, that he had used the word "had," and wishing to substitute in its stead, another tense — "Had you been informed that they had actually run any risk?" "They had not run any risk then." Then what was the "tumult" which he had spoken of before? The most favourable opportunity is then given him which an honest witness could possibly desire, of correcting himself and of explaining the whole fact — an opportunity which counsel might not have been disposed to allow, but which the House very properly gave him. The former questions and answers are read over to the witness, and he is desired to reconcile and explain them. But, with all those advantages, observe, my lords, the lameness of the pace with which he hobbles off; for on the manner of doing a thing much depends. The former question and answer being read from the Minutes, he is asked this question, "Having stated in a former answer, that you changed your name to that of Milani in consequence of a tumult that had happened, what did you mean by that statement?" "Whilst I was at Paris a gentleman came, accompanied by the [174] courier Krouse," who had been named before, "and the only time I saw him; and he," not Krouse, who might have been called, but the gentleman, who is not named — "he told me, that it would be necessary to change my name" — a kind man, though unknown; more kind than many we know better — "because it would be dangerous to come to England under my own name, as I had told him" — and these are inventions after the first part of the sentence — "had told him I was known in England under my own name; and that already something had happened on this account; not on my account, but on account of other people." — "Did he tell you that a tumult had taken place?" — now he is obliged to say something about a tumult, being led to it by the reading of the question — "He told me some tumult, some disorder." — "On what occasion did he say that tumult had token place?" "He told me nothing else." — "You are understood to say it was with respect to other persons; what did you mean by other persons? "He meant to say that some disorder had already happened, in regard to other persons, for similar causes." — "What do you mean by similar causes?" Now, I never saw a witness who was brought into a corner by such a question, who did not answer as this man has done — "I have repeated what that gentleman told me." — "Did you understand that it was with respect to witnesses who had come to give evidence in respect to the Queen?" "I believed it was for this object." — "Did you know that any witnesses had at that time come over to give evidence in the cause of the Queen?" "I did not know with certainty; but in the same way I was coming I might imagine" — the potential mood again — "that some other people might have already come." And there I leave him. I do not deny that his might imagine this or any thing else. I do not deny that other persons might have come as he was coming. I admit it to be possible. But what I deny is, that any person could have told him that which he says they told him. That he may have invented that here, when he was pressed from an unexpected quarter, I admit to be possible; but that an unknown gentleman should have accompanied the well-known Krouse to Paris, should have told him a pure fiction of the brain, that no man could have [175] dreamt of a year ago, is as utterly impossible, as that a man should, by chance, have written the Iliad. My lords, only see how this stands; for I am afraid you do not feel it with the force it ought to be felt. We now all talk of the tumult at Dover, and the risk to which the witnesses are exposed, with familiarity, because they are matters of notoriety. But carry yourselves back to July 1819. Who of us all, even in his most fanciful mood, ever dreamt of any one part of that scene which has taken place, which we know, or of those consequences which we shall unfortunately never live not to know, have followed from these proceedings — a tumult in consequence of the arrival of flocks of witnesses coming, and those regularly insulted, because witnesses in the Queen's cause? All this is mighty familiar to us now. But go back, my lords, I say, to July 1819. Would any man then have suspected it? I say, my lords, it was an invention by the witness, to cover his retreat from the position into which he had been unwarily entrapped; and that in the month of July 1819, no man ever told him, that any tumult had taken place, or that any witnesses had been exposed to insult.

My lords; it is only by comparisons like these that perjury can be detected and conspiracies defeated. And this leads me to remark, that if you defeat a conspiracy by showing perjury, or untrue swearing and prevarication on points however collateral or trifling they may be, there is an end of the credit due to the witness and the proof of the conspiracy on the main points, though you should have left them untouched — which is not the case here. But, my lords, with respect to the witness Sacchi, I may as well now mention that part of the story which he and Restelli, a turned-off courier like himself, had agreed in trumping up: because, however disgusting, however offensive, the slightest allusion to it or the recollection of it, may be, I am sure your lordships will see I cannot avoid allusion to it, and a comment upon it. Do your lordships think it very likely, that any woman — I might almost say any miserable person who gained her livelihood by prostitution — would do that thing openly, in the face of day, with a menial servant four yards from her, without the slightest covering or screen, which Restelli tells you the Queen did openly, in the neighbourhood of the Villa d'Este? Do you [176] believe that with the knowledge that a courier was travelling on one side of the carriage, with the certainty that if surprised asleep, that courier might open the curtain (for that is his story, that he always did it) — do you believe that, with the ruin to which such a discovery would expose her, by blasting her character even amongst the most abandoned of her sex, that any living person would go to sleep in the position described by Sacchi as that in which the Queen and her chamberlain were found by him in the morning in the carriage? But your lordships credulity must be stretched yet many degrees; for if you should have expanded it so as to take in the belief, that such a thing happened once, it will be nothing compared with what Sacchi has occasion for: for you must stretch it yet many degrees wider, in order to believe his story; and if you do not believe the whole, you must believe no part of it. This, he said, was the habitual, constant practice: it happened again and again; and he himself saw the self same thing several times. I appeal to your lordships — Is this probable? Is it in the common course of things, even with the most profligate and abandoned women, who are a disgrace to their sex? I say, my lords, unless you believe the parties to be absolutely insane, there is no accounting for such conduct.

My lords; there is an impossibility, I think, physically, in the story which Sacchi tells, at a time when the carriage was going at the rate of nine or ten miles an hour, over such roads as we know are found in that part of Italy, with two hands placed across each other, while the parties are fast asleep, without any power over their limbs. To overcome this difficulty would I think have required the evidence of philosophers, who had made experiments. And yet, my lords, we are called upon to believe this on the evidence of Sacchi, such as he has described himself to be; but who has given you no other description of the carriage, except that there were curtains to it. What if it be an English carriage, with glass and spring blinds! What if I show your lordships, by evidence, that it was an English carriage with glass and with spring blinds! And even if that glass were down, which is not very likely in the night, how was he to open the curtain without putting his hand in to touch the spring; which he does not say that he did? What if I [177] should prove, my lords, that Sacchi was not the courier who went that journey, but that it was another courier, of whom you shall hear more. But I do not say that it is necessary for me to prove this. I deny that I am called upon to prove this. The opposite side had plenty of witnesses to establish their case, if established it could have been. They had abundance of cast-off servants; and if cast-off servants would not answer their purpose, they had the servants now in the employment of her majesty. Now, why did they not call them? Again and again let me entreat of your lordships never to lose sight of this fact — for it is a cardinal, if not the cardinal point in this case — the accuser is not excused from making out his case. He has no right to put it upon the accused to call witnesses to prove herself innocent; seeing that it is the business of the accuser, by good evidence, whencesoever it may be drawn, to prove the guilt.

But, my lords, was there any other person in the carriage while this scene was going on? "Non mi ricordo" was the answer of Sacchi, adopting the language of the celebrated Majoochi. Now observe, my lords, the caution of this answer. That question did not come upon him by surprise. "I shall be asked," thought he, "whether there was any body else in the carriage. If I say there was any body there, nobody will believe it to have happened. If I say nobody was there, and it turns out that somebody was there, that will destroy my testimony, and therefore I must say, I do not remember." But he shall not stay there. I will drag him out. The first remark naturally would be — "this could not have taken place when any person was by — there must have been nobody else there." My lords, there was somebody else there, as I will prove to your lordships, during the whole of the journey. In the next place, my lords, after a person has witnessed such a scene as this — and that person a servant — is it very likely that, from that moment forward, his lips should be hermetically sealed? that he should never dream of confiding it to the easy ear, the willing ear, of his tender and gentle and soft friend Demont? that he should enjoy the intimate and delightful intercourse of her society, for months, both abroad and in this country, without talking of this, from a delicacy, I have no doubt, in their intercourse, far above [178] that of all other pairs? He was aware that some had split from saying that they had never told it to any one until they told it at Milan. — Boatmen, masons, carvers, gilders, waiters, all the witnesses brought from Lombardy. But he, my lords, did not choose to say so. He had, by your lordships kind permission, seen the evidence taken at your lordships' bar, and had studied it, knowing, as he does, English. He did not choose to say, "I had told it to no one," but "I had told it to people, though I cannot name one of them now." I say, my lords, if it is clear, that such a thing could not pass and be seen without the eye-witness telling it again, it is just equally clear, that the eye-witness could not tell it again, without well recollecting to whom he had so told it.

My lords; as to the witness Kress and her story at Carlsruhe, I have only to add, that it is physically impossible it could have happened, inasmuch as she says she well remembers it was after the first night they arrived at the inn. She remembers that by the circumstance of her having been called in one morning at breakfast — —

Earl Grey . — I would beg to ask whether the learned counsel is near concluding. If not, perhaps it might be desirable to adjourn now, the hour at which it was arranged the House should adjourn having arrived.

The Earl of Liverpool. — It would certainly be desirable that we should keep, as nearly as is practicable to the time which was arranged — a quarter of an hour would not be an object; but that probably would not bring us to the conclusion of the learned counsel's address.

The Lord Chancellor . — My lords, the counsel at the bar cannot possibly do justice to so important a case as this is, by binding himself to quarters of an hour, or half hours. As he is now beginning to comment on the testimony of another witness, this may be as convenient a time for stopping, as any other. I would therefore suggest that your lordships should now adjourn.

Ordered, that the further consideration and second reading of the said bill be adjourned till to-morrow morning.

4 October 1820 Mr. Brougham resumed —

How comes it to pass, my lords, that with no want of care in the preparation of this Case — that with the greatest display of skill and management in all the parts of the preparation — that with boundless resources of all sorts, to bring these faculties into play, there yet should be one deficiency so remarkable, that even upon the names of the Witnesses being pronounced, it must strike every observer — I mean, that want of balance between the different countries from which the Evidence is brought, and that unfairness towards some great states, contrasted so manifestly with the infinite attention which is paid to others; so that while the Italian States, from the greatest to the pettiest, are represented on the present occasion by numberless deputies, I will not say of all ranks, but of all ranks below the lowest of the middle orders, when you come across the Alps you find Switzerland, the whole Helvetic League, appearing in the person of a single nymph, and the whole circle of the Germanic empire embodied in the person age of one waiting-maid at an inn — that from Vienna, the capital of that country, nobody appears at all — that from none of the other resting places of her majesty, in her tour through that her native land, does a single delegate arrive, that from none of her abiding places there, least of nil from her place of nativity, where she was best known, is one deputy to be seen; and that, in fact, every thing on this side of the Alps is to be found in the person of that one chamber-maid or cellar-maid or assistant to the cellar-man or drawer — for in grave quarters doubts were raised in which of these capacities this Germanic representative was to be taken. But, whatever we might doubt as to her quality, with respect to her number there is no doubt, that she is the one, single, individual from that portion of the world, and that, save and except the Swiss maid, she is the one single individual, who is not [180] Italian. I beg your lordships pardon — there are two grand exceptions, but they are my witnesses, not my learned friends, and I reserve them to open my case withal.

My lords; I now come to call the attention of your lordships to this single German individual who appears before you, and in proceeding to deal with whom, I was kindly interrupted by the attention of your lordships to the convenience of the parties yesterday; and here, as upon former occasions, I find myself obliged to have recourse to the witness herself, for her description of her own qualifications. She knows them best; she cannot be said to be an unfavourable evidence, for except in the single instance of the Queen as shown forth against her here, there never yet was known any person, extremely anxious to fabricate evidence against herself. Now Kress, to take her from her earlier years, appears by her own account to have embraced, at the tenderest age, the reputable, the unsuspicious, the unexposed office of a chamber-maid at a little German inn. If your lordships will calculate from the number of years which she mentions back to the time to which her evidence applies, you will find she was just turned, of thirteen years when she first became such a chamber-maid at an. inn where she was afterwards. The other places in which she served it is not quite so easy to discover; but still there is no very great, difficulty, and any little impediment in the way of our research into this part of her history is removed by a little attention to what the object is of the person who alone creates that difficulty, and to the motives with which it was thrown in our way. I make Kress herself her own biographer; for she tells you she was in other places, what places? Mr. So and So. "Mr. Marwey, what was he?" — "I was as his servant." She tries to sink, until pressed, what the particular occupation of the master was, and what the particular capacity of herself in. that service; and then it comes out, that in all the instances, without one exception, in which she was in place, except when she was employed in the laundry of the palace of Baden, she was in all those cases in an inn, and in no other house. However often she may have changed her place, she never has changed her station.

My lords; she lets us a little more into her history afterwards, and into the [181] nature of her pretensions to credit before your lordships. First, we find in what manner she was induced to give her evidence; and I do intreat the attention of your lordships to it, because it shows, that if there is a want of witnesses here, particularly from Germany, it is from no lack of agency on the part of those who were preparing the Case against the Queen, for the agents in Germany are found in their accustomed number, with their usual activity, and with the command of their ordinary resources. And I must say, that reflecting upon the Milan Commission as an Englishman, and recollecting that the German agents are not our countrymen, I feel some satisfaction that there was a greater degree of impropriety shown in the conduct of the German agents than we have ever imputed to any one beyond the Alps. I introduce to your lordships fearlessly in support of this proposition, baron Grimm, the minister of Wurtemberg, the throne of which has been filled by the princess royal of England; though when I trace his connection with the parties in this prosecution — he and a person named Reden, (which Reden succeeded baron Ompteda in his mission to Rome, and is now there in that capacity, where he was one of those who dared to treat the consort of his royal master, who was his Queen as well as she is your lordships, with those insults which made it impossible for her to remain there, even if the defence of her honour had not imperiously called her hither) — Grimm and Reden, and another whose name does not occur to me, but who is also a minister of the grand duke where the scene is alleged to have taken place, were the active and the unscrupulous agents in this part of the plot against her majesty. The worthy baron, Grimm, in the zeal which he shows for his employers, I have no hesitation in saying, has scrupled not to throw away far from him all those feelings of decorum, which a man may not dismiss, even in the ordinary occasions of private life. It seems, however, my lords, that in affairs of diplomacy, that may be justifiable in a minister which would disgrace a particular individual — that that may earn him the applause of his employers which would call down upon his head the reprobation of every honest man in private life — that that may cover him with rewards, which he may falsely call honours, which would dishonour and disgrace him, had he been only acting in his private capacity. My [182] lords, I say, baron Grimm did that which would have been attended with such effects against his character, if he had not been a diplomatic agent — to whom, I presume, all things are lawful.

Baron Grimm, my lords, was living in those apartments — they were his own by occupation — he heard that the Queen was about to arrive — he artfully gave them up. He accommodated her royal highness with the use of those rooms. He kindly left the principal apartment, and disinterestedly encountered the inconvenience of a change to other and worse lodgings. He courteously gave her the use of those from which he had himself departed; and, as soon as her royal highness, on the very day that she had left them, he returns again to the same rooms, and he is found with another coadjutor in this plot, running up and down — to use Barbara Kress's expression, "running about the rooms," examining every thing, looking at the furniture, prying into the beds, taking note of what had passed, that he might report to those who he thought would have been well pleased if he had gone upon such errands, but who I know and feel were above sending him upon such a dirty mission. But, my lords, in one character he does not appear. Active as this agent every where is as a runner of the conspiracy, sedulous and unscrupulous in his observations as he has been, regardless of his own dignity and forgetful of that of the sovereign whom he represents, as he has proved himself to be, he nevertheless does not condescend to make himself a witness — he does not adventure to come forward here — he does not show the same boldness to face your lordships and us, which he showed to face the reprobation of the public in his own country, and wherever else his conduct should be criticised. Here, however, the baron is not forthcoming — here he is not to be found — yet here he was a material witness, material in proportion to the importance of the matters which Barbara Kress alone has been brought to this country to swear; to — of paramount importance, because; Kress is the only witness who is brought to swear to any one of those particulars that are said to have passed at Carlsruhe — of still greater importance, when your lordships reflect, that because, as he entered the room at the moment the Queen left it, he must have been able, if Kress spoke the truth; to give confirmation to [183] her statement. The baron is, however, absent, and the only witness that could be obtained by all the skill, the industry, and the zeal of the several agents, to speak to this extraordinary fact, is this single German chamber-maid.

Let us then pursue, my lords, the history of the only witness whom, with all the means in their possession, and so little scrupulousness in using them, these agents have been able to gather from all Germany. Look, my lords, at the contradictory account this woman gives of her motives for coming over to this country. She twice over swore that she came upon compulsion — that she only came because she was forced — and you no sooner turn the page than you find that she made a bargain for compensation for the loss of time; but she was never promised any thing, no recompence, no belohnung, only an entschadigung, it was said while she was examined: but she would not say so, she would not adopt the expression tendered her; though offered to her, she would not put it into her mouth, but she said she came by compulsion, but at the same time had bargained for recompence. But what had she reason to expect without any express bargain being made? What reason had she to expect recompence? And in what liberality had she ground to hope it would be meted out to her? She shall again tell the story which she told, however reluctantly. None of your lordships can forget with what reluctance it was wrung from her: but, happily, still it was wrung from her. Your lordships will find the part of the examination I allude to in page 193 of the printed Minutes. She was asked, whether she had ever been examined before, and she answered, she had been at Hanover. The examination then was thus, "What did you get for going to Hanover?" "I received a small payment, just for the time I had lost." "How much was that payment?" "I cannot exactly tell; it was little, very little." Now this I pledge myself to the accuracy of — "little, very little," those are her words at page 193. Why then it was said, the less it was, the more easily it may be remembered; but it subsequently turned out, that it was not because the reward was so little, but because it was so great, that she could not recollect it. "It was little, very little." Very little! What is this mere nothing? What, my [184] lords, if it was a larger sum by five or six times than her yearly wages — what, if it was a larger sum by ten times than her yearly wages — what, if this little, this mere nothing, was even greater than her yearly wages, including all the perquisites of her place! What, if added to the sum she got for another trip, to be examined at Frankfort — she having been absent from her home six days on one trip, and four or five on the other — what if, for one fortnight of a year, taking the going and returning into the account, this "very little," this mere nothing, which she cannot recollect, which she dismissed from her memory, and cannot now recall, because it was so little, turns out to be about double the sum, at all events more than half as much again, as she ever received, wages, perquisites, accidents included, in any one year, in her occupation of chambermaid! Now, my lords, will any man of plain ordinary understanding and capacity, even if he has not been accustomed to sift evidence — even if this was the first time he was ever called upon so to exercise his faculties — pretend to say that he can believe this woman, in her attempt to deny her receiving any thing — in her failure in the attempt to recollect what it was, because it was so little a sum, when it was a sum that must have made an impression upon her mind, not only to prevent forgetfulness of it, not only (if she spoke truth voluntarily and honestly) to make her have no doubt in her mind and no difficulty in telling it; but — what is equally of importance for your lordships consideration — to make that part of her evidence be pronounced false also, in which she says she expects no reward in future; when here you see, that her expectations for the future must be measured by her recollection of the liberality with which she has been treated during the past.

My lords; you will find, that the same equivocating manner pursues this witness through the details of the case. The way in which she describes herself to have left the room when she pretends to have witnessed one particular scene, in order to go to the countess of Oldi's room — her way of denying when examined, whether she went there to satisfy herself that the person she had seen, or thought she had seen, was the princess, clearly show your lordships, that she did not go to madame Oldi's room for that purpose, if she went at all; for, in answer to one of the questions put to her, as to the purpose of her [185] going to madame Oldi's room, and whether it was not to assure herself as to whom she had seen in the other, she says, "I saw it was the princess" — which had nothing to do with the question as to the purpose of her going to madame Oldi's room, if the other account she gives was true, that she had no such motive in going to madame Oldi's room, which was not an immaterial point; for it was necessary for her to negative any such reason for going to that room, as otherwise she could not prove that she had certainly seen the Queen in the other room — Non-constat that the Queen was in that room, because madame Oldi was not the only other woman in that house. It does not prove it was the Queen because madame Oldi was in that room; but still the witness having gone there with the intention of ascertaining whether madame Oldi was there, was a complete proof, that she was not satisfied that the person she had seen was the person whom it was her interest and her well-paid employment to come forward here for her employers in this conspiracy, and swear she had seen. — I have mentioned to your lordships, that in the Carlsruhe case the ambassador Grimm does not come forward, with others who might have been brought — others, belonging to the place; others belonging to the Queen's suite — to the absence of whom the observation I had the honour of making yesterday, and which I may have occasion to repeat afterwards, at present most strongly and undeniably applies.

But now, my lords, we must again cross the Alps in pursuing the history of these witnesses. And there we find, that having dismissed all the principal performers in this piece, those that remain are mere make-weights, thrown in to give colour and consistency to the fanciful picture, and to all of whom are applicable the general observations upon such testimony, which I had the honour of submitting to your lordships yesterday. Nothing, I think, can strike any one as being more inconceivable, than that what all these witnesses swear to have seen take place, should have been permitted to be seen by mortal eyes by either of the parties to whom the depositions apply. The character and nature of those witnesses of the lowest class of society, of the meanest appearance in every respect, of the humblest occupations, some of them even degrading ones, after all the pains taken to render them produceable [186] witnesses — the total failure to clothe them with any the least appearance even of ordinary respectability — all this must have struck every person forcibly who saw even but one of them here. I might remind your lordships of Guggiari, one of the boatmen employed on the Lake of Como, one of a boat of eleven, all of whom were present at the time, none of whom had any intercourse of a confidential nature with either of the parties — if we are to talk of two parties here, as the accusation compels me to do, contrary to all truth, and without any proof on their part. The impossibility of conceiving that any individuals in their ordinary senses, and possessing their common understandings, would have allowed such things to have passed before eleven men of this description, and so strange to them, must have struck every one who heard the evidence given, and have dispensed with the necessity, and almost excluded me from cross-examining a single one of this swarm of petty witnesses, who were filling up the gap between Kress and Demont. Why were none of the others called — none of the crew? Did he ever say to any person what he had seen? Had he ever from that moment to the present time whispered it? Yes, once. When — where? At Milan — to the Commission. So it is with all the rest. Restelli, who swears to a scene too disgusting to be gone over in detail — who swears to that abomination having been impudently practised in the open face of day, without the most ordinary covering or shelter, and whilst he was at four paces distance, and where the turn of his head might have revealed it to him — this Restelli, like all the rest, for it is an observation that applies to every one of these witnesses of these strange abominations — as if the relation between cause and effect in this singular case was wholly suspended — had never opened his mouth on the subject — his lips are hermetically sealed, never to be opened again, until he appears before the Commission at Milan. Ten long months elapse — the same silence! Was he living the life of a hermit all these ten months? Did he, like a solitary recluse, never see mortal face, nor approach mortal ear? Was there no brother, sister, man, woman, or child, to whom he could whisper it? To child perhaps, profligate as I have no doubt he is, he might refrain from revealing it; [187] but to brother, to mistress, to wife, he might have communicated it — to boatmen, who have been, as I know, the means of corrupting not a few of those whom they have attended, for they have confessed that they have got into the way of telling stories for which there is not a shadow of foundation, because their passengers have got into the way of paying them for amusing them with those details by way of gossip — not one whisper ever escapes the lips of Restelli, or of the rest of the witnesses, as to the sights they had seen. Is it, my lords, the effect of seeing such sights to make men silent is it the effect of seeing such sights to make men even in the higher order of society silent? How many are there of your lordships, who have not had long official habits, whose lips are not under the regulation which such experience is calculated to give, whose whole movements of mind and body are not disciplined and squared according to the rules of a court, so as even to enact the courtier when none are present — how many even of your lordships, unless perhaps persons such as I have described, would not instantly have revealed it to some friend or other? But, my lords, I profess I can name none in private society — I can hardly name any gentleman, however prudent and discreet in his conversation, who not being entrusted confidentially, who only seeing what the party showed they evidently did not mean to be concealed, who under no seal of secrecy became acquainted with the fact, who would not necessarily, on having witnessed so strange a sight, have made those wiser for talking with him whom he might afterwards chance to converse withal. Yet these low persons, so different from persons in the upper ranks of life, are so much more discreet, so infinitely more upon their guard at all times and seasons, that it is persons of discretion and purity only whose ears would be contaminated, and whose cheeks would be crimsoned by the repetition of these details; for in no one case does any of the witnesses pretend to say, that he had ever told a living being of those strange and abominable sights which he had witnessed. My lords, were they sights of every day's occurrence? Was the princess of Wales kissing her servant openly and without drawing the curtains, a thing that happened on the Lake of Como, as often as the wind blew upon it? Was the princess riding with her servant in a carriage, in an [188] attitude not to be named without a blush, an occurrence which happened every day? My lords, the sight said to have been witnessed was so strange, so unheard-of, so frightful, so monstrous, so portentous, that no person could have beheld it and kept it to himself for a single day. But, my lords, days, weeks, months, passed away, and then it was told for the first time before the Milan Commission. It was then, for the first time, that the lips of these persons were unsealed! But, my lords, I will not admit, that they concealed these extraordinary things for weeks or days or even hours. They may perchance have concealed it, from the instant that they invented it, upon hearing that their predecessors in their journey to Milan had been well paid for lesser slanders — they perchance may have kept it to themselves lest they should have covered themselves with infamy among those who knew this to be a falsehood — among their neighbours — but they kept it secret no longer than the journey to Milan demanded; and in no case, will I venture to say, was it kept longer in their breasts than from the time that it crossed their imagination to the time they went and earned the reward of their perjury.

But, my lords, you will see that in this instance we have no variety. There is, in this respect, a general sameness in the conduct of these witnesses. In other instances there are variations of importance. Do your lordships recollect Pietro Cuchi, the waiter from Trieste? Can any man who saw him have forgotten him? Does he not rise before your faces the instant I mention his name — unless many of your lordships should recollect the face, the never-to-be-forgotten expression of face, although the name may have escaped you? Do your lordships recollect that expression of physiognomy — those eyes — that nose — that lecherous mouth with which the wretch stood here to detail impurities which he has invented, to repeat the falsehood to which he had previously sworn at Milan? Do you recollect the eye of that hoary pander from Trieste? Did he not look, as the great poet of Italy describes the hoary letcher in the infernal regions to have looked, when he says that he regarded him with the eye, the gloating eye of an ancient tailor peeping through the eye of his needle? My lords, I remember that man well. The story he told is enough. But I will contradict him; for he, at least, shall not pass unpunished. [189] He, at least is here. He must be made an example of. I can contradict others: I can drag others to punishment: but he shall not escape. My lords, I will show you, by evidence undoubted, unquestionable, above all suspicion, that that man must have sworn falsely. I will prove it by the room itself. I can, if I will, prove it by the position of the door. I think his own account of the position of that door, in answer to questions put by your lordships, might almost save me the trouble of doing it. But I will show you more. I will show you, that what he swore cannot be true — either here, if your lordships put me to the necessity of it, or elsewhere, for the sake of justice: I can show, my lords, that the Queen slept at Trieste, in her whole life, but one night; that she came one day, went to the Opera, as he admitted she did (that was the only truth the witness told), left it on the morrow, and neither before or after ever crossed the threshold of the gates of Trieste in her days.

My lords; I dismiss the other witnesses of the same description. I take this filthy cargo by sample purposely. Let those who will, delve into the bulk — I will not break it more. That it is damaged enough, the sample tells sufficiently, and with a single remark I dismiss it. Recollect, my lords, those foolish stories, not only about the hand, but about the pictures, and about the bracelet chain being put round the neck, with I know not what other trumpery, got up for the purpose of variegating the thrice-told tale. And your lordships will, I think, agree with me, that the Italians who coined the fictions are pretty much the same now, that they were known to our ancestors to be, a few centuries ago. Whether Iachimo be the legitimate offspring of our great Shakespeare's mind or not may be doubted; but your lordships will readily recognize more than one of the witnesses, but one especially, as the own brother of Iachimo. How has he represented himself? — "I have belied a lady, The princess of this country, and the air on't Revengingly enfeebles me. — — Mine Italian brain Can in your duller Britain operate Most vilely; for my vantage, excellent; And, to be brief, my practice so prevailed, That I return'd with similar proof enough To make the noble Leonatus mad. My lords; the cases are the same. We have the same evidence, from the same [190] country, and for the same purpose; almost with the same effects; and by the same signs, marks, and tokens, by an extraordinary coincidence, the two cases are sought to be substantiated.

And now, my lords, permit me, having disposed generally of the characters of the Witnesses, to call the attention of your lordships — and it shall be within much narrower limits than I could have done had I not necessarily anticipated the greater part of my comments on this part of the case, in my character of the witnesses who supported it; because, while I have been dealing with the case in that way, I have been of necessity led so far to anticipate, as to comment on the different branches of the case which each witness was called upon to substantiate — permit me, I say, to call the attention of your lordships to the several Heads, as it were, of charge — the several counts — if I may so speak of this strange indictment under the form of a bill of Pains and Penalties which is brought forward against her majesty.

Your lordships will recollect, that the first of these is evidently a Neapolitan scene. There the connection is alleged to have been first completed — there the parties came together and accomplished, for the first time, but with great freedom, and with long continuance, and without any restraint at all, the purpose which they appear — I will not say long — to have cherished, but to have conceived somewhere about ten days or a fortnight before. The princess of Wales (this is the accusation), having been theretofore a person of unimpeachable character, a person of unimpeachable life; proved to have been so by much stronger evidence than if she had never been suspected; proved to have been so, if there is truth in evidence, if there is benefit in acquittal, if there is justice in the world; proved to have been so, better than if she had never been tried, by two solemn acquittals, after two searching examinations; so much proved to have been so, that when one set of ministers had reported that she was clear and innocent of the charges brought against her, but recommended her to be censured for what some persons were pleased to term "levities," their successors in office were in no wise satisfied with this scanty acquittal, as they thought it, but determined that the censure for levities should be expunged, and recommended solemnly, that she should be [191] instantly received by her sovereign, her uncle, and her father, as the purest princess could be received who ever adorned the walks of royal life. This character having, by such trials, been supported — coming out of the fire purer, in the eyes at least of those who are supposed to favour the present charge against her — how do those who are thought to favour this charge, but I should deem unjustly thought — how do they say she demeaned herself the instant she left England? Arriving in Italy, she hires a servant, a person at least then in a menial capacity, of whom I shall afterwards have to say a few words. She moves towards Naples; and, in the course of a few days, certainly in less than a month, the whole of that intercourse commenced, the degradation of the princess is said to have been completed, and all restraint flung away, from the mistress of the servant she becomes the mistress of the lover, of a menial lover, plunging herself into a situation which even profligate women could not for years accustom themselves to. Now, my lords, the whole case against her majesty falls to the ground, if your lordships do not believe, that on the second night of her arrival at Naples the alleged connection between them commenced; because Demont and Majoochi have both sworn to facts, which, if true, nay, if the least of them are true, the connection must have begun from that night, and have continued. And, with what caution, my lords, is this carried on? Suppose that a long course of profligacy could not only bend the mind to the disgraceful circumstances, but render a woman incautious by habit — that is possible. But, it is not so here; for the first act is about the most incautious of the whole. I mean, my lords, her choosing to go where she must be observed, in order to avoid the safer passage to the room, through which it was highly probable no eye could watch her.

Then, my lords, only recollect the way in which the evidence is brought forward, and see the manner in which this case is offered to your lordships belief. How is the room prepared for the first night when these two guilty persons were to meet? — by placing in the room which was to be the scene of their first loves — loves so ardent, that to accomplish them, all regard for decency and decorum had in one instant been flung away, and all caution to conceal them was for ever [192] abandoned — by placing in the room one small iron bedstead, of dimensions hardly sufficient to contain a single person, and only used upon a journey or in a voyage. This was the only preparation in a house, every room of which contained a comfortable bed. Nay, in that very room itself, there was another and a large bed, which the witnesses tell you was left untouched. The witness also tells you, in her first examination, that the larger bed was not much tumbled; but, a day or two afterwards, she mends this materially; I think on the third day. And then, in answer to a question put to her by my learned friend, Mr. Williams, who reminded her that she had said the large bed was not much tumbled, she said, "Yes, I said so when I was examined the other day, but I have since recollected something, and I can tell you more about it now;" and one of your lordships had that explained, and out came the story of the stains last of all — after she had again said, the second time mending the first account, that it looked as if two persons had pressed upon it in the middle. Last of all, she recollected stains; but what those stains were, she could not tell. No person examined her about it: but she did not much like my learned friend's operations the day before. She was not in good charity with Mr. Williams, after the second day's examination, which happened to be in his hands, and not in those of my learned friend the solicitor-general; and, accordingly, she then said she would tell him nothing more, or, as she said herself, she recollected now what she had forgotten then. What did my learned friend Mr. Williams say to her? What had passed in the interval to make her recollect one single tittle which the leading examination of my learned friend the solicitor-general, (I speak it not offensively), with the brief before him, ought not and could not make her remember then? Was it likely or probable she could forget so strong a circumstance as the situation of the bed, when she knew that she came here to prove adultery — when she felt, at every word she spoke, that she was here for no other purpose? My lords, farther, the witness volunteered to say, that the princess returned home early from the opera. I shall show, that she remained till the opera was over, in the presence of the royal family of Naples, and in the royal box. She said, that the Queen was in a state of considerable agitation when she [193] dismissed Billy Austin, for the purpose of being alone. She said that Billy Austin had been accustomed to sleep in the Queen's room. But I shall show your lordships that this had ceased long before. I shall show your lordships that he slept in the next room to her majesty, and that the door of communication was constantly unlocked. The witness said, that her majesty forbad him to come into the room; but she did not forbid him, in the most simple and effectual of all ways — by turning the key. She also describes the Queen as coming home early from the Opera, to do what no man can doubt was adultery, under all the agitation and perturbation of a bridal night. Yet, my lords, will any man believe, that this person, so circumstantial and minute on other occasions, with a perfect sense of the infinite importance to the tale to represent the bed not only as tumbled, which was not much tumbled, but as having been slept in by two persons, which was better; — will any man believe, that if she then knew or afterwards could have recollected, and if it was not a mere afterthought and fabrication, she would not have said at first, "Oh yes, the bed looked as if two persons had slept in it;" and then the stains would have been added, which she probably knows the meaning of, although, like Barbara Kress, she denies she understood them — But it is out of human probability, that persons should recollect, unless they understood them; otherwise, they are no more than ordinary marks or stains, which no person ever heeds, any more than the wind that passes over his head.

My lords; at Naples, another scene took place, to which Demont is the only witness. She tells you no time. She is aware of the consequence of that. She will not give you the means of sifting it, or expose herself to the risk of contradiction. She will not tell you, whether it was a week after their arrival at Naples, whether it was near the beginning or the end of their stay there, or towards the middle of it — but some night during their stay at Naples, she saw Bergami come out of his room naked, except his shirt, without stockings on, without a nightgown on, and moving towards the part of the corridor into which the Queen's chamber entered. She did not start back, she did not retire; but she moved on in the direction towards Bergami. And Bergami did not start back, and Bergami [194] did not make any excuse, and Bergami seeing her moved on also; and she made her escape out of the door; and he still did not bethink him of making an excuse, but he moved on to the accomplishment of his guilty purpose, with more alacrity than almost a husband would have done, in going to the bed-chamber of his own bride. Your lordships will find all this in page 251 of the printed Evidence. I hardly stop to refer to pages, because I do not rely on particular passages, but only draw your attention to the main and leading features of the case, which cannot possibly have escaped the recollection of those of your lordships who heard the evidence as given at your bar.

Let me now remind your lordships of the scene which is represented to have taken place at Catania. And observe, my lords, that here there are two witnesses who might have been called to speak to this transaction, if it really did take place, both of whom were opened by the attorney-general. "Two maids," says he, "were sleeping in the next room to that of the Queen; they both saw her come back from Bergami's room at an early hour of the morning; they both heard the child crying and the countess trying to pacify her; and they both must have known what all this meant." Now, the attorney-general not only does not venture to call both, but only one; but he does not venture to state, that these two women have ever communicated together, from that time to this, upon a tittle of what, that morning or that night, had passed. They never did communicate together — they could not communicate together — nothing of the kind had passed. The thing was false; but Demont alone is called. And what is the story as she tells it? Now, I pray your lordships to attend to it; for it is, if possible, more incredible, upon the face of it, from the multiplied improbabilities under which it labours, than that which I have just run over at Naples. My lords; Bergami usually slept, not only not near the Queen's bed-room there, but on the other side of the court, which formed the centre of the building — on the opposite side of the court was his ordinary bedroom while he was well: but he became sick; he was seized with a severe fever, and he was brought over from his usual room into another room, belonging, I [195] believe, to the countess Oldi; and there he was lying sick for some days. Now, is it not, my lords, a little extraordinary, that the scene of this amour at Catania should be laid — I will not say that it is odd that it should be laid in that room, though that was strange enough, considering it could only be approached through the room of the maids — but that it should have been laid at that time, when Bergami had a fever, and not when he was in good health? Bergami is there more as a patient than as a lover; and yet this is the particular moment chosen for those endearments which are left to be understood; and then her majesty must have Bergami placed just in that situation of all others, in which access to his bedroom was rendered the most difficult and embarrassing — the most impossible, when there were the two maids sleeping in the room between Madame Oldi's and his (for the Queen slept in that which had been Madame Oldi's room). The princess moved out of her room, and one of the servants had undressed her — this very witness had undressed her in her own room; and the story is, that she removed out of her room in the night, and returned in the morning — not that she was always lying in Bergami's room, but that she went there in the night, and coming back in the morning, she was seen by the maids returning. Is it not a marvellous thing, my lords, that this should be the mode of operation? that the thought should not strike her majesty, that, in the accomplishment of this purpose, she was running some risks without any inducements — risks similar to those which she ran at Naples in going through Majoochi's room instead of the empty room — when she might, by an alteration of the rooms, have rendered all safe and easy. She had only to place herself in the servants room or in Madame Oldi's then room, and there she could have had access to Bergami, or Bergami to her, without crossing the threshold of her maids door? But, if your lordships are to believe the representations made to you, all this is only in furtherance of, and in conformity with, the uniform tactics of her majesty, to multiply damning proofs against her own character, her own existence, happiness, comfort, and every thing dear to her in the world. For this is the plot she is in; and she is under a spell, if you believe the witnesses, never to do an act injurious to her character, without providing ample evidence to make that injury effectual.

[196] And now I am told, my lords, that I can contradict all this by means of Marriette Bron, the sister of Demont, and that it must all be believed, unless Marriette Bron is called. I say, why did not you call Marriette Bron? I say, she is your witness; because you opened her evidence; because you vouched her — because you asserted that she was present — because you told us what she saw. And yet you call only her sister, whom you have in your own pay. I say she is your witness; because this is a criminal proceeding; because it is worse than a criminal proceeding; or of a nature higher at least in its exigency of pure, perfect proof. I say a bill of Pains and Penalties is a measure of such severity, that it ought to be supported by evidence, better, if possible, and stronger, than that which takes away life or limb. I say, she is your witness, and not ours; because we are the defendants, the accused and oppressed by the bill of Pains and Penalties, which does not only accuse, but oppress and seek to overwhelm. She is your witness and not ours; because we stand upon our defence, and we defy you to prove us guilty, and unless you prove our guilt, and until you prove that guilt, we ought not — if justice yet reigns here — we ought not to be called upon for a defence. My lords; in a common civil suit, I can comprehend such tactics. I am not bound in claiming, a debt, to call, to prove my case, my adversary's servant, or his clerk, or his relation; but if I am placed upon my defence, even for the lowest crime known in the law, pure, unsuspected testimony must be given, whether it is to be derived from one quarter or from another — whether it is to be got from their side or ours. And I will put a case to remind your lordships of this: — Suppose a high-way robbery or murder to be alleged to have been committed, and a man is put upon his trial, and that a Bow Street officer, panting for his reward, or an accomplice, infamous by his own story, or a spy, degraded by his calling, or any other contaminated, impure, necessarily suspected witness of any description, is alone put forward to prove that charge; and suppose a friend of the defendant were standing by, his servant, or his partner in trade, or any person who is barely competent, by the rules of evidence, to appear as a witness — any person except his wife, who cannot be a witness — I say, no man ought to be put in jeopardy of his life, or be called [197] upon to produce in his defence, that friend, that relation, that servant, unless the case against him has been first proved by unsuspicious testimony; and if only the degraded spy, or the infamous accomplice, or the hired informer, the Bow Street runner, were called against him, their testimony is not such as to make it needful for the prisoner to call his friend. It is the prosecutor who must call his friend: it is no excuse, to say, he is a friend, a relation; a partnership is no excuse: the English law demands, what common sense approves, that every man shall be considered innocent until he is proved to be guilty; and that guilt must be proved at the peril of him who seeks to condemn losing the purpose of his prosecution.

My lords; the Queen is in a most singular situation. She must open her mind to painful constructions of the conduct of those who surround her. She may not view with a charitable eye the actions, and construe the feelings and the motives, of all she has intercourse with. She has been inured, by a long course of prosecution, by the experience of much oppression, by familiarity in her own person with manifold frauds, by all the arts of spies, by all the malice of the spiteful and revengeful, by all those hidden artifices which not even ever are always discovered, which sometimes only she has had the means of tracing and exposing to the day. This life which she has led, and of which this last scene of it which you are now sifting, is very far from forming an exception — all that she has seen heretofore, all that she has seen now since she went last to Italy, and all that she has witnessed here since her return — and she has heard the evidence read, down to the examination of the last witness on the last day — is all calculated to make suspicion general, almost universal, the inmate of an otherwise unsuspecting breast. It is the fate of those who are ill-used — it is one of the hardest portions in the lot of those who have been so buffetted by the Grimms, the Omptedas, the Redens, not to mention the Douglases, the Omptedas of our own land — it is the hard lot of those who have passed such trials, that they never can know whom they dare trust. And even at this hour, her majesty may ignorantly be harbouring a second viper in her bosom, of the same breed as that which has already attempted to destroy her. The Queen, my lords, has about her person a [198] sister of Demont. She was placed there by that Demont. She was kept there by the arts of that Demont. She has corresponded with that Demont — they have corresponded in ciphers together, if you are to believe Demont, which I do not. But I take her as described by the Case for the accusers; and, under all the circumstances, to justify, nay to prescribe suspicion, as a duty to her own personal safety, my learned friends yet leave their case short against her, proved by such evidence as I have described to you, or rather, as it is painted by the witnesses themselves. They say, "why do not you call the waiting-woman, Marriette Bron, who is still left by her sister with you?" My lords, he who fulmined over Greece in words of fire, formerly said, and I would repeat it, and remind your lordships of it, and implore you not to take it in my own words, but to recollect the words that fell from him, in which he imprinted on his countrymen, that instead of all outworks, all fortifications or ramparts, which a man can throw up to protect the feeble, the best security which the feeble have against the fraudful and the powerful, is that mistrust which nature, for wise purposes, to defend the innocent against the strong and the cunning, has implanted in the bosom of all human kind. It is alien to the innocent nature; but it is one of the misfortunes to which innocence, by persecution, is subject to, to be obliged to harbour mistrust, while it is surrounded by agents so little scrupulous as the Grimms and Omptedas, with agents so still less scrupulous, as Majoochi, Sacchi, and Demont.

My lords; I am satisfied in my own mind — I have no doubt — that all who hear me will agree with me, that we are not bound to call that witness. I know not, if we had been ordered to deliver our opinion upon the subject to our illustrious client, that we should not have felt it our duty, as professional men, to awaken suspicions in the Queen's breast, which even yet she does not entertain towards her. I know that it would have been our duty to have done so. I feel that we should have been justified in so doing; and I am confident that we might have appealed to the principles which I have now reminded your lord ships of, and have at once left the case as it stands, without calling that woman. But her majesty has yet seen no reason to part with a faithful servant. Whatever we may suspect — whatever the [199] story of Demont may have taught us to suppose possible — the Queen has hitherto never known any thing to the prejudice of her sister. She will, therefore, be presented before your lordships, and you will have an opportunity of hearing her account of those transactions which have been so falsely told by others. But I again repeat, that it is gratuitous on our part — that we do it voluntarily, from an over-excess of caution, lest it should be suspected by any one, for a moment, that there is any witness whom we dare not to call. — In like manner at Scharnitz — the story told there, which upon the cross-examination of Demont and upon the interrogatories put by your lordships, really melted away so, that very little of it remained, and which little was perfectly equivocal, and quite consistent with the most perfect propriety of demeanor on the part of the Queen. But still, having seen that among some the story made an impression, at first rather than at last, we shall explain it in a way not at all inconsistent with any thing but the peremptory swearing of Demont as to the time, when she says, that she could tell, within half an hour, how long she had been asleep, and when she could not tell, how many hours she was in a room the day before. Demont swore, that on the night Bergami returned with the passports to Scharnitz, he went to the princess's room, and there remained the rest of that night. My lords, I will prove this to be false; I will prove that the moment the passports were brought, the preparations for the journey commenced. I will prove that her majesty set off on her travels, within an hour and a half after the arrival of the passports, and that that time was scarcely sufficient to pack up and prepare for travelling. I will also prove, that during that time the Queen's door was hardly ever shut, and that there was a constant passing, not of Bergami, but of the other gentlemen of her suite — the Queen lying on the bed in her travelling dress, ready to rise at one in the morning, provided the passports arrived so early. — So with respect to the Carlsruhe case. We shall show your lordships that it is impossible that Kress can have sworn true. That she may have seen a woman in that room, if she swears true at all (which I do not believe) I have no occasion to question. But the night that Bergami went home, and the only night he went home, at the time in question, was when the Queen was [200] left behind at a music party in the palace of her illustrious relation to whom she was making a visit. She remained there two hours and a half, and upwards — she remained there until between nine and ten o'clock, and she afterwards went to sup at the Margravine's; where she always supped on the evenings she did not dine there; and Bergami and his sister and child were then at home, when he was taken ill, and went to bed.

My lords; I would remind your lordships of an argument which is used in the present case, and which I was rather surprised to hear, that some persons had been so very inattentive to the details, as to allow to their otherwise acute and ingenious minds. They say, that if this is a plot — if the witnesses are speaking what is untrue — they have not sworn enough; that they ought to have proved it home, as it were; that they ought to have convinced all mankind, that there were acts unequivocally done which nothing but guilt could account for — which were utterly inconsistent with the explanation of innocence. My lords, can those who argue thus, have forgotten two things which every man knows, one general in all cases, and the other happening in every stage of this; namely, that the most effectual way, because the safest, of laying a plot, is not to swear too hard, is not to swear too much, or to come too directly to the point; but to lay the foundation of facts and circumstances, to knit the false with the true, to build the fanciful fabric upon that which exists in nature, and in order to escape detection, to take most especial care — as they have done here — never to have two witnesses to the same facts, and to take the facts as moderately, and as little offensive as possible. The architects of this structure have been well aware of this principle, and have followed the rule throughout. At Naples, why were not other people called? Why were there never two witnesses to the same fact? Because, it is dangerous — because, when you are making a plot, have one witness to a fact, and another to a confirmation; have some things true, which an impeachable evidence can swear; other things fabricated, without which it would be of no avail — but avoid calling witnesses to the same thing at the same time, because the cross-examination is extremely likely to make them contradict themselves. Now, for example, my learned friend opened a case that ought [201] to be proved by a crowd of witnesses. Is it so usual for a princess of Wales, who is seen in a box at Naples, to go on one occasion to the theatre and be hissed, whether she was masked or no? Do the concealments of a masquerade, like the fabrications of this plot, exist longer than from the night till the morning in this place? Would not the hissing of such a person as the princess, for such a cause as the indecency of her dress, have been known to all who attended the place? Would it not afterwards have been believed and told by all the gossips of Naples — Et otiosa credidit Neapolis, Et omne vicinum oppidum. And yet one witness alone, instead of all Naples, appears. In like manner have we no other evidence at Naples of general demeanor. Why have we none to speak to the state of the beds? Why none to the state of the linen? I ask, what is become of Ann Preising? I can answer that question. She is here. I obtained the fact from a witness in cross-examination. Why is she not called? I can answer that question too. She is not an Italian. What reason is there for not calling her? Your lordships can answer that as well as I can. There was every reason for calling her, if they durst have done it. The case is short without it. She could have proved those marks — she was the princess's maid at that time, Beds! she made them. Linen! she had the care of it. Who washed the linen? Where was the laundress, the washerwoman? And yet, she was an Italian, for aught I know, though she is not called, and though her being called must have proved the case, if Dement speaks a single word of truth. They were practised in calling washer-women. They knew the effect of it in England, in the former plot. They were called in the Douglas plot, but they did not prove much, and the plot failed. Made wise by experience, they call them not here; although they know, by that experience, that if they could have stood the examination, this plot could not have failed.

But again, my lords, am I to be told by those who have attended to this evidence, that there has been any very short coming in the swearing of some of the witnesses — that they have not sworn unequivocally — that they have not proved the facts? Why, what more proof of adultery would you have than you have [202] had in this case, if you believe the witnesses, and they are uncontradicted? I do not say, if they are uncontradicted; for I say, your lordships ought not to compel me to contradict such witnesses: but if you believe the witnesses, you have a case of adultery as plainly substantiated in proof as ever gained verdict in Westminster-hall, or ever procured a Divorce Bill to pass through your lordships House. All that Demont tells, all that Majoochi tells, every tittle of what Sacchi tells at the end of his evidence, is proof positive of the crime of adultery. If you believe Sacchi, Bergami was seen twice going into her majesty's bed-room, and not coming out from thence. If you believe Sacchi, adultery is the least of her crime — she is as bad as Messalina — she is worse, or as bad, as the Jacobins of Paris covered even themselves with eternal infamy, by endeavouring to prove Marie Antoinette to have been.

My lords; I have another remark to make, before I leave this case. I have heard it said, by some acute sifters of evidence, "Oh! you have damaged the witnesses, but only by proving perjury, by proving falsehoods indeed, in unimportant particulars." I need only remind your lordships, that this is an observation which can only come from the lay part of the community. Any lawyer at once will see how ridiculous, if I may so speak, such an objection must always be. If I am to confirm the testimony of an accomplice — if I am to set up an informer — no doubt my confirmation ought to extend to matters connected with the crime — no doubt it must be an important particular that it will avail me to prove by way of confirmation. But it is quite the reverse in respect to pulling down a perjured witness, or a witness suspected of swearing falsely. It is quite enough if he perjure himself in any part, to take away all credit from the whole of his testimony. Can it be said, that you are to pick and choose — that you are to believe part, and reject the rest as false? You may — if you are convinced the part you believe is true, notwithstanding other parts which you do not believe; those parts not being falsely stated wilfully by him, but parts which you do not believe, because he may have been ignorant of or may have forgotten them. In this sense, you may choose — culling the part you believe, and separating the part you think contradicted. But if one part is not only not true — is not only not consistent [203] with the fact, but is falsely sworn to on his part — if you are satisfied that one part of his story is an invention, to use the plain word, a lie; good God! my lords, what safety is there for human kind against the malice of their enemies — what chance of escaping from the toils of the perjured and unprincipled conspirator, if you are to believe part of a tale, even if ten witnesses swear to it, all of whom you convict of lying in some other part of the story? I only pray your lordships to consider what it is that forms the safeguard of each and every one of you against the arts of the mercenary or spiteful conspirator. Suppose any one man — and let each of your lordships lay this to his mind before you dismiss this topic — suppose any one of your lordships were to meet with any misfortune, the greatest that can befall a human being, and the greater in proportion as he is of an honourable mind, whose soul is alien even to any idea or glance of suspicion of such a case being possible to himself — suppose that accident, which has happened to the best and purest of men, and which may happen to any of us to-morrow, and which if it happens must succeed against you to-morrow, if you adopt the principle I am struggling against — suppose any one of your lordships charged by a mercenary scoundrel with the perpetration of a crime at which we show in this country our infinite horror, by almost, and most justly, considering the base charge to stand in some sort in the place of proof — suppose this plot laid to defame the fairest reputation in England — I say that reputation must be saved, if escape it may, only by one means. No perjury can be expected to be exposed in the main, the principal, part of the fabric: that can be easily defended from any attack against it; all the arts of the defendant's counsel and all his experience, will be exhausted in vain: the plotter knows how (as these conspirators have done) to take care that only one person shall swear to a fact, to lay no others present, to choose the time and select the place when contradiction cannot be given, by knowing the time and the place where any one of your lordships may have been alone at any moment. Contradiction is not hereto be expected; refutation is impossible. Prevarication of the witness upon the principal part of his case, beyond all calculation of chances there will not be. But you will be defended by counsel; and the court before whom [204] you are tried will have you acquitted, if the villain, who has told a consistent, firm tale immoveably, though not contradicted, though not touched, upon the story itself, tells the least falsehood upon the most unimportant particulars to which your advocate shall examine him. My lords, I ask for the Queen no other justice: I desire she may have no other safety than that which would form the only safety to any of your lordships in such cases, before any court that deserved the name of a court of justice.

My lords; I am told that the situation of life in which Bergami, since promoted to be the Queen's chamberlain, originally moved, that that sphere of life, compared with the fortune which has since attended him in her service, is of itself matter of suspicion. I should be sorry, my lords, to have lived to see the day, when nothing more was required to ruin any exalted character in this free country, than the having shown favour to a meritorious servant, by promoting him above his rank in life. It is a lot which has happened — which has been that of many of those who have been the ornaments of their country. God forbid we should ever see the time, when all ranks here, all stations in the community, except the highest, were not open to all men; and that we should ever reckon it of itself a circumstance even of suspicion in any person — for neither sex can be exempt from an inference of such a nature if it is once made general and absolute — that he has been promoted! Let me, however, remind your lordships, that the rapidity of the promotion of Bergami has been greatly overstated; and, the manner in which it took place is a convincing proof, that the story of love having been the cause of it, is inconsistent with the fact. Now this I ask, from a distinct recollection of the dates in the evidence; before you. Believe Majoochi and Demont, and three weeks after Bergami's arrival in the household, he was promoted to her bed. How was it with respect to the board? Because, after that, he continued in the situation of courier; he dined with the servants, and lived not even with the chamberlains; certainly not, for they were at her table, as usual. He continued to dine with the servants at Genoa; not with standing Majoochi's story, it is proved to your lordships that he did not dine with her. He continued as a courier, even after he had once sat at her majesty's table by accident. It appears [205] even in the evidence (believing it to be true), that the Queen sat at table where he was for the space of one day. He, however, still continued a courier; and it was only on the eve of the long voyage, that he was admitted to her table, commencing with the journey to Mont St. Gothard. He continued in his situation of courier, still in livery; until, by degrees, he was promoted, first to travel in a carriage of his own, instead of riding on horseback. Then he was promoted occasionally to sit at the same table with the Queen, and at last he was appointed a chamberlain generally. My lords, this is not consistent with the story told of Naples. Show me, my lords, the woman, particularly the amorous, the imprudent, the insane woman her majesty is described to be by these perjured witnesses, who would have allowed her paramour, after indulging in all the gratifications described at Naples, for weeks and months, to continue for months, and almost for years, in an apparently menial capacity. My lords, this is not the rapidity of pace with which Jove promotes his favourite votaries; it much more resembles the sluggish progress with which merit finds its way in the world, even in courts. My lords, he was a man of merit, as you will hear in evidence — if you put me on calling any. He was not of the low origin he has been described to be. He was a person whose father held the situation of a proprietor, of moderate income, in the north of Italy. He had got into difficulties, as has happened to many of the Italian gentry of late years; and his son, if I mistake not, had sold his estate, in order to pay his father's debts. He was reduced; but he was a reduced gentleman. When he was in the service of general Pino, he was recognized as such. The general repeatedly favoured him as such; he has dined at his table, general Pino being the commander-in-chief in the Milanese. He has dined at his table during the Spanish campaigns. He was respected in that situation — he was esteemed by those whom he served at that time. They encouraged him, as knowing his former pretensions and his present merits; and when be was hired, he was proposed by a gentleman, an Austrian nobleman, then living in Italy, in the Austrian service — he was proposed to the Queen's chamberlain, as a courier, there being a vacancy, and was hired, without the knowledge of her majesty, and before she had even seen [206] him. The Austrian nobleman, when he offered him as a courier, said, be fairly confessed, he hoped, if he behaved well, he might be promoted, because he was a man whose family had seen better days, because he was a faithful servant, and with ideas belonging rather to his former than to his present situation. It was almost a condition of his going, that he should go for the present as a courier, with the expectation of soon filling some other vacant place.

I do not dwell on this, my lords, as of any importance to the case; for whether I shall think it necessary to prove it or not, I consider that I have already disposed of the Case in the comments which I have made upon the Evidence, and in the appeal which I have made to the general principles of criminal justice. But, as the conduct of her majesty has been so unsparingly scrutinised, and as it is important to show, that impropriety existed not, where I defy guilt to be proved, I thought it requisite to dwell on this prominent feature in the cause. If the Queen had frequented companies below her station — if she had lowered her dignity — if she had followed courses which, though not guilty, might be deemed improper and inconsistent — if she had been proved guilty of any unworthiness — I could have trod upon high ground indeed But I have no occasion to occupy it. I say, guilt there is none — levity there is none — unworthiness there is none. But if there had been any of the latter, I might have appealed to your lordships, upon a ground which always supports virtue in jeopardy, the course of her former life, at home, among her own relations, before she was frowned upon here — while she had protection among you — while she had the most powerful of all protection, that of our late venerable monarch. I hold in my hand a testimonial, which cannot be read — which I am sure will not be weighed — without the deepest sense of its importance: above all, without a feeling of sorrow, when we reflect upon the reign that has passed. It is a melancholy proof — more melancholy, because we no longer have him who furnishes it amongst us, spared to us — but it is a proof, how that illustrious sovereign viewed her, whom he knew better than all others — whom he loved more than all the rest of her family — even than those upon whose affection she had a greater claim. The plainness, and [207] honesty, and intelligible, manly sense of this Letter is such, that I cannot refrain from the gratification of reading it. It was written in 1804 —

Windsor Castle, Nov. 13th, 1804.

My dearest Daughter-in-Law and Niece; —

Yesterday I, and the rest of my family, had an interview with the prince of Wales at Kew. Care was taken on all sides to avoid all subjects of altercation or explanation, consequently the conversation was neither instructive nor entertaining; but it leaves the prince of Wales in a situation to show whether his desire to return to his family is only verbal or real, — (a difference which George the 3rd never knew, except in others) — which time alone can show. I am not idle in my endeavours to make inquiries, that may enable me to communicate some plan for the advantage of the dear child you and me with so much reason must interest ourselves; and its effecting my having the happiness of living more with you is no small incentative to my forming some ideas on the subject; but you may depend on their being not decided upon, without your thorough and cordial concurrence, for your authority as mother it is my object to support.

Believe me, at all times,
My dearest daughter-in-law and niece,
Your most affectionate father-in-law and uncle,

GEORGE R.

This, my lords, was the opinion which this good man, not ignorant of human affairs, no ill judge of human character, had formed of this near and cherished relation, and upon which in the most delicate particulars, the care of his granddaughter and the heir of his crown, he honestly, really, and not in mere words, always acted.

I might now read to your lordships, a Letter from his illustrious successor, not written in the same tone of affection — not indicative of the same tone of regard — but by no means indicative of any want of confidence, or at least of any desire harshly to trammel his royal consort's conduct. I allude to a Letter which has been so often before your lordships in other shapes, that I may not think it necessary to repeat it here. It is a permission to live apart, and a desire never to come together again — the expression of an opinion, that their happiness was better consulted, and pursued asunder, and a [208] very plain indication, that her majesty's conduct should at least not be watched with all the scrupulousness and all the rigour and scrutinising agency, which has brought the present bill of Pains and Penalties before your lordships. [Cries of "Read, read!" The learned counsel accordingly read the Letter, as follows:]

Madam;

As lord Cholmondeley informs me, that you wish I would define in writing, the terms upon which we are to live, I shall endeavour to explain myself upon that head with as much clearness and with as much propriety as the nature of the subject will admit. Our inclinations are not in our power, nor should either of us be held answerable to the other, because nature has not made us suitable to each other. Tranquil and comfortable society is, however, in our power; let our intercourse, therefore, be restricted to that, and I will distinctly subscribe to the condition which you required, through lady Cholmondeley, that even in the event of any accident happening to my daughter, which I trust Providence in its mercy will avert, I shall not infringe the terms of the restriction, by proposing at any period, a connexion of a more particular nature. I shall now finally close this disagreeable correspondence, trusting, that, as we have completely explained ourselves to each other, the rest of our lives will be passed in uninterrupted tranquillity. I am, Madam, with great truth,

Very sincerely yours,
GEORGE P.
Windsor Castle,
April 30th, 1796.

My lords; I do not call this, as it has been termed, a Letter of Licence — this was the term applied to it, on the former occasion, by those who are now, unhappily for the Queen, no more — but I think it such an epistle as would make it matter of natural wonderment to the person who received it, that her conduct should ever after — and more especially the more rigorously, the older the parties are growing — become the subject of the most unceasing, unscrupulous watching and investigation.

Such then, my lords, is this Case. And again let me call on your lordships, even at the risk of repetition, never to dismiss for a moment from [209] your minds, the two great points upon which I rest my attack upon the Evidence; — first, that they have not proved the facts by the good witnesses who were within their reach, whom they have no shadow of pretext for not calling; — and secondly, that the witnesses whom they have ventured to call are, every one of them, injured in their credit. How, I again ask, my lords, is a plot ever to be discovered, except by the means of these two principles? Nay, there are instances, in which plots have been discovered, through the medium of the second principle, when the first had happened to fail. When venerable witnesses have been seen to be brought forward, when persons above all suspicion have lent themselves for a season to impure plans, when nothing seemed possible, when no resource for the guiltless seemed open — they have almost providentially escaped from the snare by the second of those two principles; by the evidence breaking down where it was not expected to be sifted, by a weak point being found, where no pains, from not foreseeing the attack, had been made to support it. Your lordships recollect that great passage — I say great, for it is poetically just and eloquent — in the Sacred Writings, where the Elders had joined themselves, two of them, in a plot which had appeared to have succeeded, "for that," as the Scriptures say, "they had hardened their hearts, and had turned away their eyes, that they might not look at Heaven, and that they might do the purposes of unjust judgments." But they, though giving a clear, consistent, uncontradicted story, were disappointed, and their victim was rescued from their grip, by the trifling circumstance of a contradiction about a mastich tree. Let not man call those contradictions or those falsehoods which false witnesses swear to from needless falsehood, such as Sacchi about his changing his name, or such as Demont about her letters, or such as Majoochi about the banker's clerk, or such as all the others belonging to the other witnesses not going to the main body of the case, but to the main body of the credit of the witnesses — let not man rashly and blindly, call those accidents. — They are dispensations of that Providence, which wills not that the guilty should triumph, and which favourably protects the innocent.

Such, my lords, is this Case now before [210] you! Such is the Evidence in support of this measure — inadequate to prove a debt — impotent to deprive of a civil right — ridiculous to convict of the lowest offence — scandalous if brought forward to support a charge of the highest nature which the law knows — monstrous to ruin the honour of an English Queen! What shall I say, then, if this is their case — if this is the species of proof by which an act of judicial legislation, an ex post facto law, is sought to be passed against this defenceless woman? My lords, I pray your lordships to pause. You are standing upon the brink of a precipice. It will go forth your judgment, if it goes against the Queen. But it will be the only judgment you ever will pronounce which will fail in its object, and return upon those who give it. Save the country, my lords, from the horrors of this catastrophe — save yourselves from this situation — rescue that country, of which you are the ornaments, but in which you could flourish no longer, when severed from the people, than the blossom when cut off from the root and the stem of the tree. Save that country, that you may continue to adorn it — save the Crown, which is in jeopardy — the Aristocracy which is shaken — the Altar itself, which never more can stand secure amongst the shocks that shall rend its kindred throne. You have said, my lords, you have willed — the Church and the King have willed — that the Queen should be deprived of its solemn service. She has indeed, instead of that solemnity, the heartfelt prayers of the people. She wants no prayers of mine. But I do here pour forth my supplications at the Throne of Mercy, that that mercy may be poured down upon the people, in a larger measure than the merits of its rulers may deserve, and that your hearts may be turned to justice.

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